Do you wish there's a god?

[The Grand Nudger]

-and in what way would it matter whether they did or didn't make sense, or made more or less sense?

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Are you saying that you honestly just don't get the category difference between a child capable of rejecting the claims of theists and remaining an atheist into adulthood; and a baby, rock, lizard, children raised by wolves, or people in a permanent vegetative state?

Not at all. And I don't know how you'd get that from my post.

If a child hears, evaluates, and rejects religious claims, then he's using his mind and he has reasons. Good reasons or bad. 

Do these reasons stay the same, after he's learned more? I should hope not, as little kids don't really understand much theology.

You couldn't get this any more wrong, and you're trying.

I didn't actually reject the claims of any given theist as a child, I just never believed them.  I was a much more friendly agnostic atheist than any you'll find on the boards, that much I do know. It didn't seem like much of a stretch for -any- god story to be true, and I heard many, many more than just the one that most people are familiar with. Why couldn't thousands of gods be flitting all over the place, dragging the sun across the sky and painting dew on the morning flowers? Monsters too, all things that go bump in the night? Why not? I just didn't believe them, myself. There's a difference between not believing a claim and rejecting it, and not all rejection has or requires reasons in the first place.  

Atheism is a statement of a fact.  Not a position on some other thing, no matter how hard you want it to be, Bel. People say all sorts of shit all the time, you don't actually wander through your life actively accepting and rejecting everything that falls from other peoples lips For Reasons™. It doesn't matter if we're discussing a child or an adult, gods or anything else, this little rule you're desperately flogging is nonoperative. You could have a mulligan the first time, because hey, maybe it's very far out of your own experience......but at this point....?

Here's what I'd propose. Most people..theist or atheist, didn't actually reason themselves into either state. Maybe this is embarrassing, or they don't like the feeling of arbitrarity that it produces - and so they invent ad hoc rationalizations not only -as- "The Reasons™", but very literaly as an ad hoc rationalization for that state.

I would be very, very surprised if a person found god or fell from god as a direct result of rational thought. If you spent a few years reading the (de)conversion stories on af, for example, you'll note a cadence. People "found it harder and harder to believe" or "harder and harder not to believe" -and then- went searching for reasons™ to believe, or to support their new state of dis or non belief. People had some experience, either legitimizing or delegitimizing the notion. It's a very rare instance in which the head leads doubt or belief.

We're all simply wrong about ourselves in one way or another. I used to assume that I must have had reasons, for example. We've got a believer here who thinks that it's seeing pretty stuff and meaning that makes them believe. We've got an atheist who thinks that they wish there were a god.

I can't tell you what any reason was or even could have been, people see pretty things and meaning and don't believe, and with everything we know about the power of wishthinking..what are the odds that an atheist has a genuine godwish?

You, for your part, clearly need to believe that there is some challenging or sophisticated theology that others are not properly addressing and would have to in order for their atheism to be..who knows what..., but what would that be..again?