(February 12, 2012 at 10:26 am)Norfolk And Chance Wrote:(February 9, 2012 at 12:45 pm)RW_9 Wrote: In reference to the responses of others: everyone is born an atheist.
Nobody is born an atheist. This particular form of justification has always got under my skin. By the same token, nobody is born a theist either.
When you are born you are "a nothing", you know nothing, and you have no beliefs nor disbeliefs. You can't disbelieve something if you have no concept of belief in anything. Atheism is non belief of a particular proposition, that being the existence of god/s.
The argument I'd make is that a kid wouldn't come up with a god-tale if someone didn't put it there in the first place. I do agree with your labeling of it as "nothing" rather than atheistic because you do need to be cognitive and mature enough to call yourself an atheist or anything else.