Quote from: Nathan. on September 05, 2010, 03:19:20 AM
Babies aren't even aware that us humans have gods and stuff, all they know is that they are hungry/tired etc They have no belief in god, they are pretty much blank canvases.
They are atheists, it rediculous to say that they aren't, people are not born believing in god. I don't even know how people come to that conclusion 
People do not just profess atheism, I was an atheist before I knew there was a term for it because I had no belief in god.
If you're going to eliminate choice from the equation then you might as well say that every person that is either dead or hasn't been conceived yet are atheists as well. While your at it throw in rocks, trees, cars, ...etc. since they all lack belief in a god. Beliefs and non-beliefs alike are meant to be perceptions of reality. Without something to perceive it's entirely impractical to label that lack of perception as a specific non-belief.
For example, if I were to tell you that there was a person standing directly in front of you you would only tell me that you didn't believe me if your eyes were telling you something different. That is, I'm presenting a situation that contradicts your senses, i.e. what you base your "knowledge/beliefs" on. Now is that lack of belief the same as that of someone who is 100% ignorant of this situation? Is the non-belief of any person who wasn't there as relevant as your non-belief?
Non-belief is always either based on other beliefs or on ignorance and these two "non-belief"s are very different and deserve to be treated as such. To use a term that is meant to pinpoint such a small section of non-beliefs only to leave it open to both knowledge based and ignorance based forms of non-belief only weakens the definition of that term. It defeats the whole purpose of a definition which is for the sake of distinction.
There can be made a very broad genus that covers all non-beliefs, both ignorance and knowledge based where the only shared quality is that of general lack of belief. However there is no more reason to place any importance on one member of that grouping than on any other. e.g. A car is "not" many things, but is it any more worth while to say it is not a dog than to say that it is not a carrot? These types of groupings are unnecessary as anything other than an alternative to labeling infinite amounts of "non" qualities for one specific object and any attempt at grouping "non" qualities leads to logical paradoxes(which is evidenced by Russel's paradox) if used as anything other than for the above purpose. It's a tool that's meant to be used and then thrown out.
So when you use the word "atheism" are you meaning it in a concrete sense that's supposed to withstand in-depth scrutiny? If so then you can't use a simple "lack of belief in a god" as it's definition. However, if what you mean by "atheist" is literally just a broad term for any person who has the specific quality: "lack of belief in a god", then your stance holds no impact. It's just a passive observation of a wide range of individuals and is analogous to any other passively true statement such as, "that dog is not black", when nobody asked.
And to extinguish the argument that will undoubtedly arise from this example, i.e. "what if the argument is that the dog is in fact black?": In that case it just becomes the former type of "non" statement and, as with the definition of "atheism", it must always remain its respective type.
So... please choose your context and stick to it, or at least inform us of when and why you are making the switch.
