RoderickSpode

I am looking for the study but I think this one of them. 

Humans 'predisposed' to believe in gods and the afterlife -- ScienceDaily

The issue at hand is whether or not children start out as atheists, which is a discussion independent of there actually being a creator or not and related arguments.

This is at least one of your statements where a misunderstanding takes place. The subject at hand is not whether or not children have a belief in God.

No, the subject at hand is whether or not children start out with a belief in God. They do not.

There is no neutral ground between atheism and theism. Atheism is the negation of theism.

In other words, there's probably a fairly subjective reason for a number of atheists to insist infants are atheists.

And a fairly objective one: they are atheists.

Because it was in reference to something of a relationship with a creator which this discussion is not about.

Around 5-6 to have the kind of abstract thoughts necessary.

Because, as I have explained, infants lack the cognitive ability to even form such beliefs.

Science does, however, show us that infants lack the cognitive ability to form such abstract beliefs. No belief = no belief in a god = atheism.

Whether I agree with this is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

The conversation at hand is whether or not children have a belief in god when they are born. They do not. This has nothing to do with whether or not a god actually exists and whether or not said god can interact with those children.

Not the abstract beliefs such as a belief in god. Once born their beliefs (such as they are) are limited direct interaction with the world and, even them, most of their responses are reflexive, not conscious and voluntary.

Nothing is awful about it. It is just irrelevant to this conversation.

A belief in a god? Yes. I am sure about that. Infants lack the cognitive development to form such abstract beliefs. It takes well more than a year

for children just to realize that other people are in fact other people (rather than extensions of themselves) yet we're going to place on them the burden to conceive and understand the concept of a god?

I am not talking about "drawing a blank."

As a believer I don't see any reason to rule out a conscious realization of a creator during infancy, even if not able to conceptualize the idea of a god. And of course biblically speaking it makes a lot sense.

Then this would be yet another area in which the Bible contradicts known science. If you're argument boils down to "Children are theists because the Bible says so and take the Bible

at

its word by default" then I have no refutation to offer and our conversation comes to a conclusion.

The scope of conversation for -isms is generally restricted to people (e.g. humans). I'm not prepared to talk about the atheism of slugs or rocks or such. They are out of scope.

A violation of what?

The definition is what you have stated it to be and your issue isn't with the definition. You simply don't understand that infants don't have beliefs and therefore atheists. You simply want them to have beliefs as that is consistent with your own beliefs as derived from the Bible. I can say nothing to this except that there is nothing about the real world that suggests it must conform to your established world view or that of the Bible. That this doesn't matter to you is contradicted by your desire to create a thread about this very subject.

But again, in my opinion infants have a relationship with the creator that overrides the infants lack of being able to form beliefs. We can intermingle with ants even though they are powerless to understand what we are.

I don't even care to know what that means.

The relevant fact is they lack the ability to form beliefs. Ergot they lack beliefs. Ergo they lack a belief in god. Ergo they are atheists. It can't get much simpler or iron clad than that.

That we don't know exactly what is going in the heads of infants and toddlers does not mean we can't rule out some things. The presence of early child-hood amnesia still perplexes many people. Yet we do have a fair grasp of the generalities of cognitive development.

I think it's agreeable to suggest that conceptualizing the idea of a god requires a fair amount of abstract thought, as it is not rooted in any think physical or tangible in the real world. This kind of thinking really doesn't start developing until later childhood. But it has very fuzzy edges and abstract thoughts trickle in slowly at first and this type of thinking strengths and broadens as the child grows. We're talking ranges anywhere from 6 to 16, depending on a variety of circumstances.

Point being, an infant simply does not have the capability of forming any real beliefs as they don't have thoughts in the sense we understand them, let alone thoughts about abstract entities.

So you are not really sure if my question was referring to a handicapped sixteen year old?  You read that question and your first through was "wait a minute, does he mean a special needs sixteen year old? Better clarify just in case!" For real?  

The dictionary defines an atheist as a disbeliever or someone that lacks belief.

So yes, I would certainly have lacked belief at the age of 4....In fact, I expect that at the age of 4 most kids have not really grasped the concepts of either,  belief or disbelief.  Save the odd few who have had the misfortune to suffer overzealous indoctrination.

So in terms of lacking belief, I think that it is fair to say that children start out as atheists.

Rod, it doesn't make any difference, babies are not born believing in god, which answers the question in the OP.  Resoundingly, YES, they are atheists. They don't believe in god, which is the only requirement to qualify. An infant doesn't have the cognitive function to worry anything but its physical needs, it doesn't contemplate the origin of the universe or life. Forget I asked about the sixteen year old, you don't want to answer and instead are trying to dissemble into semantics. 

You say the same thing to the second person who approaches you, and they say they never heard of god "x", or any reference to a god concept, and may, if they have time look into it.

Is that person an agnostic?

If they've never heard of it, then they can't believe in it.

If they don't believe in it, they can't claim any knowledge to it.

Ergo they're an agnostic/

Okay, I guess forget it then. Intelligence doesn't determine if someone is  a child or not. 

An atheist is a person that doesn't believe in a god or gods.

How can a child not believe in something they've never heard of from another human?

Easy. You can only believe in things you've heard of (or at least conjured up yourself). So if you've never heard of it (or invented it yourself) then necessarily you don't believe in it.

I suggest no such thing. Agnosticism is separate from atheism. It is not some philosophical middle ground between theism and atheism. Agnosticism is about knowledge. Atheism and theism are about belief.

Most children will believe anything you tell them; it doesn't mean they "start out" believing in it. I'm not sure of the point of the OP. 

Children aren't born theists.

An atheist is a person that isn't a theist.

Ergo children are born atheists.

Just say you don't want to answer, man. It's not that hard, a sixteen year old is a child, for pete's sake.  I have an idea, why don't you define "child" because I'm pretty sure I know what a child is. If you want some sort of semantical trap door, go ahead and build one, or just skip the question for being somehow too impenetrable. 

Children also accept the existence of Santa Clause if you teach it to them. 

I'll rephrase: if you kept a person's influence absolutely free of any mention of religion at all for the first sixteen years of their lives (think of it like being totally isolated on an island where religions simply doesn't exist), and that child spent their time learning critical thinking skills and the demonstrable scientific reasons things happen, do you think after sixteen years you'd be able to convince them a god exists?

Do you think George Washington Carver wasn't taught critical thinking and the scientific method?

He wasn't taught the scientific method free of any influence of religion at an early age. My question: 

Do you think you could convince a sixteen year old, if you never taught them anything  about religion,  any religion, but  taught critical thinking, science and natural causes that we can demonstrate as the causes for various natural phenomena, do you think at 16 you could convince that child that a particular god is god's real? 

What's your answer to my question?

If you were taught critical thinking and the scientific method, you wouldn't reject it out of hand, but you'd end up rejecting it after examination, because there's no other real conclusion to make. 

My opinion is no. That is, children do not determine that there's no God based on lack of evidence.

This is not the answer to the question posed in the topic. When a child is born, it has no concept of any god at all, and is therefore an atheist. In fact, they don't even know what evidence is, and they don't understand language. So yes, they are atheists, and there are only two options: atheist or theist, there's no third option. 

Would you agree that the childhood years are typically VERY Important for the formation of religious ideas?

Do you think you could convince a sixteen year old, if you never taught them anything  about religion,  any religion, but  taught critical thinking,

science and natural causes that we can demonstrate as the causes for various natural phenomena, do you think at 16 you could convince that child that a particular god is god's real? 

They do that stuff in the Indian and the chinky religions so it means that it is not being true to the true God.  Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. Timothy 4:7.

So you see it doesn't work because your mind is thinking of puberty.

They do that stuff in the Indian and the chinky religions so it means that it is not being true to the true God

A word in a book, a picture on a screen, or even music - are all tools that can be used for communicating messages.  But they don't have the capacity to CAUSE anything. 

But ummmm

I feel like this thread is a response to something I missed.

Most people don't really understand spirituality at its most effective layer is a science, not even most religious types get it. So when intelligence and spirituality cross breed and meet in the middle you have a hybrid freak. A scientifically minded (analytical thinking) individual mixed with the dynamics of spirituality make for the most fascinating people.

Spirituality can be super intellectual as well as scientific, it's just rare to see unfortunately. What you have is the best of both worlds because really there's no reason for them not to work together (other than asserting opposing worldviews), both science and spirituality are the study of two distinct natures, they run parallel with each other and are relentless in the revealing of all the fine intricacies between the two.

It's really sad to see that for the most part people see religious framework as something distinct from science or intelligence when in fact they are very compatible, and what kind of personality types are attracted to either system is completely irrelevant to truth and reality.

The battle is not even between science and spirituality but between atheism and theism.

Never did Abraham think it was out  of character for god to do such a thing. This implies that early Christians (Jews) saw sacrifice, specifically child sacrifice, as something that god might command. 

Which book of the bible is Abraham actually in, and not referred to?

The actual tale doesn't say anything at all about what Abraham thought of the whole thing,  just that god told him to do it, and Abraham was so sure that he should do it he didn't even hesitate to take the kid up the mountain,. In this story, god told Abraham to kill (sacrifice as a burnt offering = dead, we agree?). How the story nds and how other books interpret it is a different topic, but do you agree that in the story in genesis, specifcally the verse I cited, god tells Abraham to kill his son? 

This is a pesky verse then: Gen 2:22: " "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there

as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."" So you're saying Abraham knew god was kidding? Doesn't that make god 's word suspect? How do you know if he's kidding or actually commanding? Seems a dangerous proposition on which to make a guess, considering according to your beliefs, disobedience  without repentenace results in eternal torture., and your case on judgement day basically comes down to "Wait, you were SERIOUS about that? Oh my goodness, so sorry, I was positive you were kidding, like you did with Abraham!"

More like non-sensical. ETA: we can discuss it further in a different topic if you're interested, this one's pretty deep and the story of Abraham isn't really the topic. The command from god to a human to kill another human  was what I was responding to. Apparently Christians think that god was either kidding  and both he and Abraham knew it (this was not one of the non-sensical ways I have heard the story, it's a new one!), or you can sacrifice a burned child and it's not dead somehow. 

The best thing to do is focus on the direct message itself which is the faith of Abraham. That we do know. 

Exactly, and that's what's weird about it. 

I'm not saying the focus of the Abraham tale is god telling a guy to kill his son. I'm saying THAT IS IN THE STORY.  Nothing more than that. There's far more meat on the bone of that tale than there is question about what exactly Abraham left his hut with his kid intending to do.  The story itself is not at all mysterious, and if I said I don't understand the story, I mis-spoke:

I don't understand how Christians INTERPRET the story. The meaning you get from it doesn't make sense. Do a topic on it and we can discuss if you like, I'd enjoy that. 

All I'm saying is what the text actually says, in the verse, is god telling a guy to kill his son.  It's very plain: take you son to the top of that mountain and offer him as a burnt sacrifice. This part of the story is completely unambiguous. There's plenty of weirdness in the whys of this story and their implications, but we're far afield of the topic at hand. 

All that's well and good, but the point is the text shows god asking someone to kill someone else. What happens after that is a different discussion.  The text is the text.  THe story in Genesis is clear. 

So you're denying the fact that god commanded the destruction of several communities?