Agnostics

[Mister Agenda]

I disagree that we are all born atheists. the construction of 'atheist' isn't 'a-theist' or 'not a theist', it's 'athe-ist', a person concerned with 'athe', no god. Rocks, babies, and dogs aren't atheists; because they are not people capable of concerning themselves with the existence or nonexistence of God(s). A baby truly has no opinion one way or the other, and both atheism and theism are opinions on the reality of supernatural deities. In other words, I don't believe 'implicit atheism', absence of theism without conscious rejection of it, is a useful or accurate term. May as well call it implicit theism because the person has no conscious rejection of atheism. Such a person is a blank slate on the matter until they've been exposed to the idea. Implicit nontheism would be a better term, they're not a theist, but as I said, 'not a theist' is not all there is to atheism. There's a little bit more: not accepting theism.

That is simply inacurate. Lack of belief is an acceptable form of atheism. Lack of knowledge of existence of belief is perfectly compatible with atheism as well.

Certainly, I lack belief in God myself rather than expressing certainty in the nonexistence of any kind of God or god (I am a gnostic atheist regarding the tri-Omni version and literal Biblical version, however). Lack of knowledge of existence of belief renders atheism not even an opinion, and I think it is at least that.

But I'm aware that my opinion doesn't represent the majority here. I don't think it's splitting hairs to observe that a rock isn't a person and that the suffix 'ist' can't apply to a rock, though. A rock does fit the definition of 'atheist' that you give though: it does lack knowledge of existence of belief.