Depends on how you define "atheist". If you mean just a lack of belief in a deity, they are. On an anecdotal note, my 10 year old niece told me, when talking about religion, that when she was little she didn't know anything about God and that she found out what it was later.
I sometimes get the feeling she will end up as an atheist, and while I do believe now, I totally support her. We were discussing religion, and I told her how many people believe in different things and some people don't believe, and it's all okay unless it harms another person.

If that's a response to me, the term was 'non-believer' You either believe or you don't. If it's not a response to me, never mind.

cogitate-truth wrote:
Babies are born with a blank slate so, there are neither believer, nor non-believer babies

Have you read comment number 77 by hackenslash in this thread because if not you really should

cogitate-truth wrote:Babies are born with a blank slate so, there are neither believer, nor non-believer babies.

That might hold water if it weren't for the simple fact that it's a true dichotomy. Either you believe or you don't.

This makes babies typical zipper-heads, their parents or guardians unzip their little heads and pour in whatever they want them to believe.

And if they pour in nothing, they won't believe, ergo: they'll be atheist.

I salmon could philosophize or think strategically [I will cunningly ignore the question if they actually can do these things or not! ]. They may remark: "Fuckit! Only two of my eggs need to survive for me to do my bit to keep the population stable". With humans, the investment [particularly by the mother] in an individually fertilized egg is HUGE. And these babies are born as helpless as they can be. So the logic is that babies Are zipperheads, and the priority is data collection, not processing. "Be cute, get mum to help me, feed me, tell me what is dangerous about the world" is the pseudocode for a bay's survival. Of course the baby's half-developed brain it will let in woo. So they may lack religion [they lack a lot of opinions], but it sets them up for any nonsense that the parent may communicate to them.

cogitate-truth wrote:Babies are born with a blank slate so, there are neither believer, nor non-believer babies.

That's like saying that an object is nether white or non-white. A breaking of the Law of excluded middle, third of the three classic laws of thought (the big three).

To put it even more simply: If someone is not a believer then they are a non-believer. Because "not a believer" means "a non-believer".

Mac_Guffin wrote: On an anecdotal note, my 10 year old niece told me, when talking about religion, that when she was little she didn't know anything about God and that she found out what it was later.

This is an odd turn of phrase to me. I don't know anything about God to this day. I've never been able to figure out, exactly, what it was actually supposed to be. All I know is what people tell me it is, but they seem all be describing something different. I'm reminded of the blind men searching the elephant analogy, only there doesn't seem to be an elephant there in this case. Except the one that is in the room.

ADParker wrote:

cogitate-truth wrote:Babies are born with a blank slate so, there are neither believer, nor non-believer babies.

That's like saying that an object is nether white or non-white. A breaking of the Law of excluded middle, third of the three classic laws of thought (the big three).

To put it even more simply: If someone is not a believer then they are a non-believer. Because "not a believer" means "a non-believer".

This may be the same issue as with "atheist" v. "theist", depending on your definition of "non-believer" - ie, does it mean consciously non-believing, or just by default (ie, not having thought about it)?

DavidMcC wrote:This may be the same issue as with "atheist" v. "theist", depending on your definition of "non-believer" - ie, does it mean consciously non-believing, or just by default (ie, not having thought about it)?

Hmmmm... so it's possible for someone who's believing is "acquired", by default, unconsciously through tradition/culture rather than by some conscious submission/acceptance/epiphany might actually be a "non-believer" at some level?

No I didn't think so either.

A friend of mine once tried to argue that once a baby was christened/baptized they were xtian regardless.
He reckoned I was xtian because I was christened (and have the mug to prove it).
[He did eventually change his mind over years of knowing me.]

Hamster wrote:A friend of mine once tried to argue that once a baby was christened/baptized they were xtian regardless.

It's a central tenet of Christian dogma (or at catholic dogma, at least). There was a famous case of an Italian-Jewish child name of Edgardo Mortara who, when sick, and feared by the christian domestic looking after him to be dying, was baptised by her. When the church heard about it, they removed him from his parents because the ad hoc baptism made him officially christian, and there was no way that a christian child was being raised by Jews. This was in the mid 1890s.

DavidMcC wrote:

ADParker wrote:

cogitate-truth wrote:Babies are born with a blank slate so, there are neither believer, nor non-believer babies.

That's like saying that an object is nether white or non-white. A breaking of the Law of excluded middle, third of the three classic laws of thought (the big three).

To put it even more simply: If someone is not a believer then they are a non-believer. Because "not a believer" means "a non-believer".

This may be the same issue as with "atheist" v. "theist", depending on your definition of "non-believer" - ie, does it mean consciously non-believing, or just by default (ie, not having thought about it)?

I prefer to take words as they are presented. "Non-believer" includes no hint, or limitation to, being conscious of it. Why assume someone means anything of a narrower scope than what they actually said?

ADParker wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

ADParker wrote:

cogitate-truth wrote:Babies are born with a blank slate so, there are neither believer, nor non-believer babies.

That's like saying that an object is nether white or non-white. A breaking of the Law of excluded middle, third of the three classic laws of thought (the big three).

To put it even more simply: If someone is not a believer then they are a non-believer. Because "not a believer" means "a non-believer".

This may be the same issue as with "atheist" v. "theist", depending on your definition of "non-believer" - ie, does it mean consciously non-believing, or just by default (ie, not having thought about it)?

I prefer to take words as they are presented. "Non-believer" includes no hint, or limitation to, being conscious of it. Why assume someone means anything of a narrower scope than what they actually said?

Because that's the way language is. Look up almost any word in the dictionary, and you will find different shades of meaning. Often, context can be used to decide what the word means in that context, but other times it has to either be specified by the user of the word, or guessed, and so ambiguity comes in. In this case, you may be being a little idiosyncratic in your choice of definition, and you therefore may sometimes cause confusion.

It's pointless, I wouldn't even bother.

hackenslash wrote::picard:

If you don't understand, you should ask, not just be appalled, because you are only showing your ignorance.

DavidMcC wrote:

hackenslash wrote::picard:

If you don't understand, you should ask, not just be appalled, because you are only showing your ignorance.

Atheist are people who do not believe in gods, regardless of whether this lack of belief is based on ignorance or knowledge.

DavidMcC wrote:

hackenslash wrote::picard:

If you don't understand, you should ask, not just be appalled, because you are only showing your ignorance.

I understand perfectly, thanks.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

hackenslash wrote::picard:

If you don't understand, you should ask, not just be appalled, because you are only showing your ignorance.

Atheist are people who do not believe in gods, regardless of whether this lack of belief is based on ignorance or knowledge.

That is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. However, my dictionary (Chambers'), at least, describes "atheism" as "DISBELIEF in a god". Note, the word, "DISbelief" is used. The same dictionary defines "disbelieve" as "believe to be false". This does not mean merely a non-belief by default, but a positive and deliberate non-belief. I'm sure that there are dictionaries around that are less clear about that, but it is the definition that many of us understand to be the "best" one, even if hack, etc, pour scorn on it, on the basis of ignorance.

Many other dictionaries define disbelief as refusal or INABILITY to believe. You can therefore disbelieve simply because you are unable to believe, which says nothing about any deliberate non-belief. This discussion has been had so many fucking times.

They pour scorn on it for being a shit definition and one that needs to be changed in dictionaries since it doesn't match the current usage of the people who claim the label.