The only reason this question gets hard is because people try to smuggle in all sorts of other connotations and agendas onto the words theist and atheist, and considering this case exposes them.

I couldn’t agree more, and the perfect example of this, as someone noted above, is that the newspaper article described simple 4-year-old theologyl-formulations as God-with-a-capital-G. It would be incorrect to call these 4-year-olds “theists” (either in the usual sense, or in the nonstandard definition that Dawkins used in TGD) let alone believing in capital-G God, which suggests the Judaism-and-its-offshoots deity.

Incidentally, like Kate, the irony of the irrational and factually incorrect schoolyard taunt “as smart as 4-year old infants” remark also wasn’t lost on me.

If atheist means “not believing in god” then infants are atheists, without caveats.

I agree. Atheism and theism, as far as I’m concerned, are about belief, while agnosticism is about proof. A baby lacks any understanding of proofs or beliefs.

Spirituality can be measured on a scale. Most people hover around its mid-point, while some of us are so low on the scale (outliers) that we’ve been atheists since our very early years (to the dismay of our parents). Others register so high as to become the crocoduck displaying, delusional types we come across every now and then.

Spirituality, illogical as it may be, is fine, as far as I’m concerned, since it doesn’t really hurt anyone. Expressing it through organized religion and indoctrinating the masses, however, is, in my opinion, the pits.

Those of us who are far left and far right on the bell curve will always migrate toward our respective places regardless of what life throws our way. Conversions on either side can occur, but they are the exception, not the rule.

As with anything, atheism can be measured on a scale. My husband and I, if rated, would score close to a 1 on a scale from 1 to 100. My husband, the black sheep of his family, was raised in a religious home, got dragged to church, his brothers are all believers, including a recent convert to Baptism, yet, there he is, an atheist in their midst, since the day he learned to talk. His environment was the same as the rest of his family’s, but as a little boy he just didn’t believe. His mother used to call him “Thomas the Doubter” out of frustration that this little person didn’t just fall in line with his family’s beliefs.

Those closer to the center need an extra push one way or the other, but the doubts that are inherent in being close to either side of the center are always there to some extent, no matter on which side of the proverbial fence one ends up sitting.

Actually, I think “atheist” is the wrong word here.

I think babies are agnostic.

Whether something is agnostic or not does not answer the question of whether it believes or not. Infants do not believe in anything: belief is an activity that requires far more complex abilities to conceptualize things. If atheist means “not believing in god” then infants are atheists, without caveats.

Yes, they don’t have the ability to believe, and I do. But belief is something that requires a whole bunch of pre-requisites. And while I have more of them than an infant, the gist is the same: neither or us have what is necessary to hold the belief in question.

The only reason this question gets hard is because people try to smuggle in all sorts of other connotations and agendas onto the words theist and atheist, and considering this case exposes them.

They discard many of these beliefs and reinforce others as we develop. That doesn’t make children atheist or theist, just gullible.

Kids think their toys are people, they think the people on the TV actually live inside it, and so on. It’s not a hard leap from there to thinking that trees, the wind, or the earth itself are living creatures that do things for a reason.

I think it’s really just part of the social instinct. Humans have evolved an impressively complex system of behavior that allows them to cooperate, survive, and accomplish things that pure biology wouldn’t have allowed. In fact, humans are so good at working with other humans that the instinct is overwhelming; they see human faces in their toast and assume everything that happens is somehow the result of human-like reasoning and intent.

Give it a few generations of trying to put together a consistent explanation and it’s easy to get almost any theistic religion. Give it a few more generations of work and it stops having any relationship whatsoever to reality.

But, if not, than it really is a little juvenile. Yet, I wholeheartedly support the message!

And smarter than people who don’t know that infants aren’t four years old. Grow up.

I think this would make a great atheist poster! Anyone with photoshop that can help us out with a graphic?