(June 23, 2019 at 2:35 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: This question is, sadly, found in google autofill... well... "who started atheism"... a much worse, much more ignorant version of the question. I'm hoping it's mostly children who return from Sunday school with this sort of question. But I bet the sad truth is, it's asked by adults for the most part... adults with really skewed visions of the world.
(June 23, 2019 at 1:47 pm)no one Wrote: Atheism predates religion. Humans learned believe in the nonsense that is religion.
As an interesting aside, this brings up the question if disbelief can predate the proposal that said thing exists. If it can, that would mean that you categorize nonbelief as a kind of "default." But doing this creates all kinds of problems.
It would mean that you "disbelieve" every future scientific theory that will be proposed. Who would assess their attitude concerning future scientific theories and come to this conclusion? Not me. I think that some future scientific theories will be correct, others will be incorrect. I'd have to hear/read about the theory first before I determine a potential belief status. Taking this way of thinking about it into mind, the "first" atheist would be the first caveman who disbelieved a "God story" after having heard it.
The difference is people who will propose future scientific theories which currently doesn't exist for me to consider alternative to disbelieve will likely make a much more honest and creditable effort to overcome my disbelief.
As far as I can tell, god as propounded by those who attempts to overcome my disbelief isn't even theoretically capable of supporting any honest and creditable effort to overcome any disbelief.