Atheism is now legally a religion.

Great Debates
321

I think the trouble some are having with the idea that a baby is atheist, is in the idea that atheism must be an intellectual decision.

I don’t see it that way. Now certainly a baby doesn’t have a belief in God, that’s true. But then again, it doesn’t have much in the way of beliefs at all.

Now I think where the trouble is, that most atheists, at least most I’ve seen, see atheism as an intellectual thing they’ve achieved. That is true, but only in our culture. In our (American) culture there is a general presumption of the existence of God. You see it on the money, you probably see it in most of your relatives. You get taken to Church. So our culture takes babies and forms theists out of them almost automatically.

The rejection of that conditioning is an intellectual action, and it certainly couldn’t be done by an infant.

What I’m saying is that society takes an infant, an atheist, conditions it into a theist, and then shaking that conditioning is what you’re perceiving as the logical journey.

And it’s no small feat for a lot of people, especially when they live in a bubble of ignorant theism that leaves them nowhere to discuss the ideas that ultimately lead to the rejection of theism.

TL;DR: Babies are atheists, our society crams religion down most babies’ throats. Most people become theists and need to affirmatively reject religion. (something a coffee mug can’t do)

322

As I mentioned I’ve met only one person who falls into the Gnostic Atheist category - though, as we’ve seen, theists think lots of us do.

You seem to be defining knowledge as absolute certainty btw. We can get into all kinds of problems if we do this.
I know my work will be there before I set off in the morning, so I don’t bother to check. But it might not be. I know there is no god in the same way, so I don’t bother to pray or go to any services. But that isn’t absolute knowledge.

323

Well, sure. You could get into the whole epistemology of the entire gnostic row, but when it comes to practical beliefs/applied knowledge, many atheists would fall into Gnostic Atheists; though philosophically, they’re Agnostic Atheists.

Yet, the distinction is there for a reason—there are those who claim with 100% certainty there is no God(s)—which I would consider a faith, but not a religion.

324

Yeah. Not an achievement, but something you think about. I don’t know anyone who self-identifies as an atheist having never considered the question of divinity, and I never hear people saying that the pineapple they’re buying is atheist, and the idea of describing a baby as atheist is counterintuitive. The use of “atheist” simply to mean “lacks a belief in God” does not appear to be how the word is used most of the time.

Not at all. A baby does not have atheism in the same way that an adult has. A baby has as much an opinion on the existence of Gods as I have an opinion on the existence of Christmas sweaters in your household: I don’t exactly believe they exist, but only because the question has never occurred to me (until I wrote this paragraph). It would take some work to convince me you had Christmas sweaters–but it’d also take some work to convince me you didn’t have any.

In the same way, conditioning a baby either to believe in God or to believe in a universe without Gods is a movement away from the baby’s initial state.

325

You don’t have to self-identify as an atheist to be an atheist.

Yes at all.

A baby doesn’t have a belief in God or Gods. It’s an atheist.

You don’t have to be convinced there is no God to be an atheist. You just have to not be convinced there is a God.

As I say above, you don’t need to reject theism to be an atheist. You may not self-identify as one, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t one.

326

All you’re doing is reasserting your definition. I’ve offered reasons to show it doesn’t correspond to how the word is used by most folks. You can continue to use it in an idiosyncratic fashion–there’s glory for you–but if that’s all you intend to do, well, godlessspeed.

No, that’s what “agnostic” means, if it’s following reflection. Nobody but possibly you maintains that a coffee mug is atheist.

327

That isn’t what agnostic means.

Not believing in a God is most certainly a common definition for atheism. Asserting that it must be an active choice is goofy. That suggests that theism is a natural state that must be overcome.

328

No. The natural state is a lack of a belief in any number of gods. When you decide that the number is probably 0, 1, or more, you’ve moved from the natural state to a reflective state.

329

The natural state of man is to not believe in all Gods. Belief in Gods needs to be either confabulated by the person, “that thunder means someone in the sky is mad at me” or introduced to him by the outside, “listen to daddy, if you do bad things God will burn you forever and you’ll never see mommy and daddy again.”

That child before that had no religious beliefs. I agree that this isn’t a reasoned position. Or somehow profound. But atheism isn’t inherently profound. There is a feeling of profundity when you shed the lies told by churches and well-meaning parents. But all you’re doing is casting off brainwashing. It’s laudable to do that. But to suggest that it requires an intellectual step to not believe in Gods, suggests that something close to belief is inherent.

You’re falling on the idea that atheism requires a declaration, and that’s not the case. Atheism having a name at all is weird. We don’t have a word for someone that doesn’t believe in Horoscopes, or Reiki, or Homeopathy, or Marvel Comics.

330

Even if we accept the definition that babies can be atheists – which is fine for now – that statement would still be literally true.

A baby does not have atheism in the same way that an adult has.

This does not have to be a denial of baby-atheism. It’s a qualitative statement. The quality of baby-atheism is different from the quality of adult-atheism because most adult atheists have consciously considered the issue and decided not to take up theism. This might be because they were taught theism as children and later rejected it, or because they were taught no religion and came to consider the possibility of a god or gods, however briefly, and rejected it because they considered it unlikely.

You can give an adult a survey: “How many gods do you think there are? How sure are you of the answer?” Lots of adult-atheists, most especially those who self identify, would answer zero and say they’re pretty sure but not totally certain.

You can give a baby the same survey, and all the baby can do is drool on it.

A baby does not have atheism in the same way that an adult has. The quality of their atheism is different. This is an important distinction.

Using a narrow definition of atheism, this is true in a funny sort of reverse-True-Scotsman way. It also brushes over yet another difference in quality.

People who self-identify as atheist I’d say are more likely to assign a low probability to the notion of one or more gods existing compared to other groups. People who self-identify as agnostic are more likely to say “I don’t know” when they’re asked the probability of one or more gods existing.

These are interesting qualitative differences. These are important distinctions.

And in fact, the word as it is actually used out there in big wide world quite possibly takes full note of those distinctions in a way that’s very useful for conversation, even if some would like to deny that. Real world usage of “atheism” and “agnosticism” when people are successfully communicating with each other about their beliefs might not conform so cleanly to one’s favorite definition. The word out in the wild, far away from any personal semantic zoo, might just be thrown around most often for the probabilistic denial of the existence of any gods – not necessarily absolute denial, but the belief that the weight of likelihood is against. The word “agnostic” could be more general.

I don’t have a corpus of evidence about this, but I can say I’m much more interested in what people actually mean when they use words for their own precise purposes, rather than what some outsider decides to label them as in order to maintain the purity of a personal dictionary.

This is especially weird when actual real dictionaries disagree.

Agnostic

New Oxford American: a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God

Merriam-Webster: a person who does not have a definite belief about whether God exists or not

American Heritage: One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

People use agnostic all the time to avoid professing atheism. I did it myself. When I called myself an agnostic, I did so without any belief in gods and I outright denied that I was an atheist when asked. If you had asked me the chance that gods exist, I would have said “I don’t know”. You can affix whatever label you like on such people, but I’m sure you realize that the meaning of words does not come from some holy book. In a conversation, the word means what people use it to mean. If I’m having a discussion with one of them, I’m not going to use labels contrary to their own usage because they won’t understand it and communication will be impossible. In addition, they will quite likely take offense. I know that I would personally have taken great offense at being labelled an atheist when I identified as an agnostic, and I would guess this is more generally true.

331

I, of course, agree that a baby and an adult would generally approach atheism differently. Especially in our society where you’re forced to take an active stance, since theism is forced in a lot of ways.

The broadest definition of atheism I’m aware of is not believing in a God. By that measure any non theist fits the bill. Of course there are different dictionary, philosophical and theological definitions all at play here, but many in the atheist movement that currently exists accept that definition.

For instance:
[

](What is Atheism? - American Atheists)

I don’t assert that there is no God, I assert that there is no evidence to speak of for one, and a lot of evidence against specific values of God. Given this lack of evidence I don’t believe in Him. Which, is a return to my previous state of belief.

332

Just to point out, Lobohan’s Baby (great name for a science fiction novel, btw) is, according to that M-W definition, agnostic. I think it makes more sense to consider the baby to be in another category–words like “agnostic” and “atheist” and “theist” are best applied to people who have reflected on their beliefs–but if we must apply one word, then coffee mugs and babies are agnostic.

333

Consider Larry Farklestein. The poor bastard was born and raised in Antarctica. He was very well educated in most all disciplines, however, every notion of a God or fictional being was completely kept from him until the day he died at the age of 80, never once giving any indication he thought there might be a higher existence or a divine being to worship.

Any religion you might imagine, if forced to label his (non)belief in God, would have to call him an atheist, simply for lack of a better word. Larry might have believed, or he might have rejected them all. But we’ll never know since the entire idea was alien to him.

Though, then again, he was Jewish.

334

You’re correct that atheism isn’t inherently profound. I think there’s nothing profound about my belief in a universe without gods, and if you think that’s what it’s about, you’re off-base.

But it’s not casting off brainwashing, any more than the kid raised atheist who converts to orthodox Judaism is casting off brainwashing. The move is from having no beliefs about the universe at all, to having a belief about the universe that includes or excludes divine action, to possibly changing that belief.

The child who has no belief about the existence or absence of gods is not atheist; she is agnostic (or just ignorant).

335

A thought experiment about someone who’s never existed won’t suffice to get me to change how a word is used :). Rather, if we’re going to talk about people who live and die as adults without ever considering the idea of divinity, and if we decide we need a word for this phenomenon, I’d suggest we call it Farklesteinism.

336

Ahh, but it could happen or be arranged in theory. And despite my love for the new label, I’d argue he’s not really any -ist or -ism.

He just was.

That’s our Farkle.

337

Circling back to the OP, the court’s decision referred to Secular Humanism not Atheism,

Secular Humanism is pragmatically apatheistic by definition: it basically says that any possible deity would have no relevance to human affairs.

Now, I can understand how a religious person might have difficulty understanding that there is a significant distinction between atheism and apatheism, but the underlying point to this post is that these arguments about supra-beings have little or no bearing on the actual subject at hand.

338

Obviously an infant wouldn’t be able to communicate any thoughts on the matter and more than likely doesn’t have thoughts on the matter, but apparently we have a propensity to assign purpose-driven explanations to things when we are young, up until the age of 7 or 8. For example, studies show a child will probably reason that a pond exists to give animals water to drink while an adult would reason the pond exists due to geological circumstances regardless of whether animals will use it as a water source or not. I could see where a belief in some sort-of higher power, something that makes sure everything in this purpose-driven world works, is ingrained in us and is probably the reason religion has existed throughout human history. Most of us transfer out of the purpose-driven explanations either by being taught there is actually a God that does all this or reasoning that there is no such thing as natural purpose.

I think atheism is the default position, but I can also see that it’s probably ingrained human nature to seek an explanation for our existence and considering we’ve only been doing science for the last few hundred years of human history, it’s easy to see why the vast majority of people in the world are still theists.

339

Yes. The confusion arrives from something I learned on these boards, they there are two flavors of atheism: strong atheism and weak atheism. Personally, I don’t think we need the “weak” flavor, as “agnosticism” takes care of that pretty well. But where you come out makes the most sense.

340

Atheism begins at conception! :wink:

Seriously though, I think the example of a baby is worth exploring more because we already recognize that a baby (or even a young child) does not have a developed mental capacity such that it can make decisions for itself. It’s not just that the baby did not reflect on the concept, it is that the baby cannot reflect on the concept.

So depending on how you define mental maturity, the age at which “atheism” can be said to begin is an interesting thought experiment. If it is after speech, then you run into the situation where children can say (or parrot, if you prefer) things about God but do not have the mental faculty to actually mean what they say. And this doesn’t necessarily apply to just statements of faith - my parents tell me that I said adamantly that I didn’t believe in God when I was 4. I don’t remember it, though, or what the thought process in my head was like at that time.

I question also whether the reasoning behind calling a baby an atheist leads to odd classifications - for example, if a pastor fell into a coma, would we call him an atheist during that time? Or had severe head trauma rendering him severely mentally disabled? How about a persistent vegetative state, where the brain has (as I understand it) basically died?