Do you believe atheism or a belief in God is the default?

Question

For instance if a child were raised by wolves, like mogli in Kipling’s jungle book, do you think they would they naturally have some concept of God or not?

Answer 1

I think that if you take a child and raise them with no knowledge of beliefs and superstitions one of two things can happen.Either they will simply not have any beliefs or they will invent their own.This universal truth applied for early mankind.Some invented beliefs and others chose not to believe or simply spent their lives with spirituality rather then religion.

Answer 2

I think they would not. However, I do think there is an obvious reason for so many people to believe in things so improbably. Allow me to explain. The default position, academically, is that the person making a claim has to prove it--not the other way around. Applied to god, this means that theists carry the burden of proof, and the default position is not to believe.

I think everyone is born which a deeply felt fear of the unknown. It helped our evolutionary ancestors to survive and formed groups. It also created the incentive to communicate. However, the unknown is no less scary now than it was several million (or thousand) years ago, even though we have done away with a subsistent existence. The idea of a god or a universe ordered with us at the center, however untrue, helps to mitigate this fear. That, in a paragraph, is why so many people believe in god even though the default position is the other way around.

Answer 3

Humans are born without any innate belief, but humans also have a desire to explain events around them. Things that are not explained by science at a given time and place give rise to superstitions. Many of these superstitions are gods and as such it is perfectly natural for a human to develop an idea of god(s) without any instruction.
Humans also show a natural desire to "spiritual" things, which often result in beliefs in higher powers. These can sometimes be gods.
PS: I am not a theistic apologist, I am an atheist.

Answer 4

man fears death, he dont understand it. he wants to beleive in an afterlife. theres no default, its not like all the beliefs are stored in our brain and our brain chooses what the best default is. we only believe what we our taught. so a person raised by wolves would not believe anything cause he would know nothing, he might look and the sun and think its a god as did man back in the ancient times. it was easy to beleive in a god back then cause nobody knew nothing. same as now, we still dont know anything, we beleive but were taught. until we reach adulthood of course.

Answer 5

It has been demonstrated time and time again that a lack of scientific knowledge directly contributes to the development of religion. In other words in the face of no other explanation for natural phenomena humans tend to invent suprenatural explanations for the world. This also effectively demonstrates why there are so many religions in the world and not just one and they all claim to have access to the only truth or that their deity is supreme over all others.

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Answer 6

it is probably quite a common quirk of human psychology to have a capacity for belief in some sort of god - if there are no parents to provide a concept to believe in, it will probably be invented. i don't expect that such concepts would be consistent with each other though.

Answer 7

i could say it replaced into any opposite direction around. once you're born you do no longer understand something approximately god or gods, so which you should be an atheist - you won't be able to have self assurance in something if to you do no longer understand of its existence, you're a sparkling slate. Agnosticism could propose a archives of the ideas yet a loss of theory in them the two way - no longer shown that's in basic terms once you have extra (ahem!) understanding which you would be able to take a place to be agnostic or believer, or proceed inclusive of your atheism. yet that's then an reported place, no longer the preliminary sparkling slate. that's bit like being a soccer supporter. you're no longer born helping Chelsea or Arsenal or whoever, inspite of what your Dad says. you're a-soccer. once you grow previous you could desire to choose your Dad's group, you could desire to in basic terms flow alongside yet no longer help everyone, or you could desire to assert you think of soccer's rubbish. yet by using that ingredient, you have the advice to make the alternative.

Answer 8

Try to imagine what god-beliefs a newborn infant has when he or she is just born. Try to imagine any beliefs that that infant may have.

That is the natural state.

Answer 9

Atheism is the default. We all were atheists before religion was foisted upon us.

atheist

Answer 10

Absolutely not. Belief in a religion is something that is learned