Okay, I'm sick of hearing this, emergency Atheist/Agnostic meeting. Do you agree?

Question

I'm very tired of hearing that "Atheism" is the default religion, and that all children are "born" atheist. They're not. They're born without any knowledge on the subject whatsoever, and as such, they are born agnostic. This is very simple logic, and should be easy to follow. If someone can throw a monkey-wrench through it, I invite you to. If not, I hope you'll adopt my position on this matter.
It makes us look uneducated to assume that everyone is born "Atheist" I myself am an Atheist, and I know full well that I was not born that way. I was born without any knowledge of religion or God at all, and thus the very definition of "Agnostic" "Not Knowing"

*spelling errors. "throw" a monkey wrench.
*grammatical errors. Not the default religion, but the default "position."

I am willing to concede Ignostic, but not "Atheist" because Atheism -is- a stance.
Good call, first poster. Can we agree on ignostic?

Answer 1

The word you're looking for is ignostic -- they're born ignostic.

Answer 2

The argument comes both from different definitions of both atheism and agnosticism.

Atheism itself is an ambiguous term, that can me any number of things, but to be clear, when someone says this, they mean atheism as in "nontheism", defined as "absence of belief in deities" (see wiki below). As such both newborns, and agnostics qualify as atheists. The other primary definition would be "The affirmation of the nonexistence of dieties." Which they rather obviously wouldn't be qualified under.

Agnosticism on the other hand can also mean a number of things. It CAN mean "The absence of a position on whether or not a diety exists", in which case newborns would qualify, but it can also mean, "The belief that it can not be known whether or not there is one or more dieties.", or even, "Being unsure of whether or not dieties exist. In the latter two cases, a newborn would not qualify. When most people talk of agnosticism, just as when most people talk of atheism, they -DO- mean it as a position that is taken, the position that humanity does not know or cannot know, a child holds no such position and if anything holds the opposite, believing that grownups must know these things, though not necessarily having a position themselves.

It'd be better if newborns were claimed to be neither atheistic or agnostic, but rather nontheistic or ignostic, but really, these terms are obscure and impractical to use in all scenarios. As such it shouldn't be a horrible offense to use either of the two more familiar terms, because due to the use it should be clear which definition of the word is being selected.

Answer 3

I would say they are born blissfully IGNOSTIC!
Agnostic comes later.
First they need to learn a language, then...
They have no idea what you mean by God until you tell them. after that they can decide to be agnostic, atheist or whatever.
They will likely believe whatever you tell them until they are old enough to figure out that parents are not always right, some times are misinformed and at other times actually lie.

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The other point is that all atheism means is lacking a belief in God. This Idea that it means an active belief any other way, positive atheism is not really what the word means and is a tag the religionists are hanging on you. If you accept it they will succeed in turning your Atheism into just another cult.

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Now I read the other answers.
Nice job by The Dude.

For months every time I put the word Ignostic out there people would read it as a typo and respond to it as agnostic instead.
The spell checker still refuses to recognize it.

Answer 4

I think children are born none of the above.

Agnostics claim either that it is not possible to have absolute or certain knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of gods.

A baby has no concept of a god, but neither does it believe that it can have no knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of a god.

A baby neither believes that there is (theist) or isn't (atheist) a god.

A baby is simply a blank slate which has not yet developed any sort of theistic belief. You first have to ask the question 'is there a god?' to be labeled agnostic, atheist, theist, etc. I don't think you fit into any of these categories until you're presented with the possible options and make a decision as to what you believe.

Answer 5

Technically, agnosticism is the belief that the knowledge itself is impossible (From the greek 'gnosis'), not that the person is unsure. Though the word in common usage is often used as you described it, it isn't really accurate.

Atheism, one without a belief in theism, probably is the 'default' state of any person. Belief in anything, be it Paris, the universe, leprechauns or God, is taught somehow, even if invented by the person. So, when a baby is born, they probably on't have any beliefs, and as such, are atheist.

They are also a-unicornists, a-Parisists, and a-leprechaunists.

Answer 6

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to refer to someone who is pre-religion as an atheist. Atheist can simply mean 'worships no gods', which strikes me as what babies do. Compare a church nursery to a Sunday school class for four-year-olds in terms of instruction.

I think it would be useful to have a commonly accepted term for pre-religion atheism as opposed to the post-religion atheism that a lot of us here have. But the terms 'atheist' and 'agnostic' cause enough trouble for a lot of people here that I'm not sure throwing more vocabulary into the mix wouldn't monkeywrench it up further.

Answer 7

OK then, here's your requested monkey wrench:

Agnosticism does not mean "not knowing whether or not deity exists". It is the positive assertion that the question of deity is unsolved and unsolvable. This is the original definition from the man who coined the term, Prof. T.H. Huxley.

Atheism means "no belief in deity". That does not necessarily have to mean "making the positive assertion that deities do not exist." It means "not having that belief". So by using the strict definition of the world, we are born atheists because we haven't learned about deities one way or another, just as we are all born "apolitical".

Answer 8

I disagree, to be agnostic implies there is something that you are not sure about. A baby has no such thoughts. It simply has no belief in god. That is the definition of an atheist.

Answer 9

I think it could be argued that to be agnostic you have to have knowledge of the ideas you don't have a firm belief in. Agnostic is more the assertion that you don't know, rather the truly not knowing.

I think babies would just be considered ignorant to the entire topic.

So lets come up with a new word. How about Ignorantheist?

Answer 10

Why must a label be put on this period of one's life? Couldn't "To Be Determined" work as effectively? Many children can't speak or understand language, but they are christened/baptized, aren't they?

No one is the same. Some folks consider their child to be of the same religion at conception and others before conception. Why does it matter?

Answer 11

I agree, it is a stupid and inaccurate claim that we were all born atheists. I suppose that people would defend that by using atheist to mean one who has an absence of a belief in god, rather then the belief of an absence of a god, but in making such divisions between implicit and explicit atheism, it is irritating.