What came first, the atheist or the theist?

[Cecco]

The answer is simple: The theist.

Because the concept of there being a God needed to be invented before someone could deny it.

I would imagine that it was only a few seconds after the first theist came along that the first atheist joined however.

Interesting to think though, that theists have been around longer than atheists.

Thoughts?

[Tiberius]

An atheist is someone who does not believe in Gods. It doesn't require the existence of a particular belief in order to not believe in it; in fact, not believing in something is the default position. You don't believe anything unless you are told something about it first, or find out about it on your own.

Do you believe in fadgdvaet? Probably not, seeing as I've just coined the term in the last few seconds. You don't believe in fadgdvaet now, and you didn't believe in him 10 minutes ago, or 10 years ago. So you've been longer without belief in fadgdvaet than I have with belief in fadgdvaet.

[theVOID]

Man has been around an estimated 150,000 years The earliest known theism is only some 10,000 years old.

That means being "without belief in God" came first. Nobody needed to first posit theism for there to be people without theistic belief.

It would be like saying that the car had to be invented for people to not drive cars...

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

The answer is simple: The theist.

I have to concur with others on this topic. By definition, the atheist came first, such to the effect that religion is much, much newer than the human race, especially if you consider the many homo species that were as intelligent as humans but didn't form any kind of religion, which altogether can go back millions of years to the earliest annals of human biololgical history.

Atheism is defined as not having faith in a religion and during the time before religion, everyone was an atheist because no one believed in any religion or other supernatural faith.

[Minimalist]

So you've been longer without belief in fadgdvaet than I have with belief in fadgdvaet.

All hail the fadgdvaet. Do we have to sacrifice a chicken or something?

[Rhage]

Considering that we are all born atheists now, it would stand to reason that the first humans were atheists as well.

[Tiberius]

All hail the fadgdvaet. Do we have to sacrifice a chicken or something?

fadgdvaet prefers the sacrifice of Pandas, but Goths are a worthy substitute if you can't find one.

[Cecco]

in order for me to not believe in the fadgdvaet, i need to first know the concept of the fadgdvaet to deny it. before you mentioned it, i neither believed nor didn't believe in it.

the definition of an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in god. so before this concept arose we first needed the concept of believing in god in order to deny it.

before the concept of god was created, humans were not non believers in god, because they had no idea what it was that they weren't believing in. wow, that's one hell of a sentence right there!

would you say that all monkeys and other animals are atheists too? nonsense. they have no concept one way or the other, neither would humans have.

definition of an atheist: someone who denies the existence of god.

before the concept of god was created, people were not denying that he existed, so there were no atheists until the first theist arrived.

[Cego_Colher]

All hail the fadgdvaet. Do we have to sacrifice a chicken or something?

I don't know, but it seems awfully close to fudge somehow. I think we should all eat fudge to celebrate Fadgdvaet. We could sacrifice chickens too, but I hope we don't need to offer up the fudge.

fadgdvaet prefers the sacrifice of Pandas, but Goths are a worthy substitute if you can't find one.

Oh, damn. Oh, wait, I stopped being a goth years ago. unless we aren't talking about those kinds of goths. Well, I'm not one of them either.

[Cecco]

man, if there was one religion in the world that gave out free fudge at church, i'd believe anything they told me. amen.