Vylo

Atheism:
1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
The doctrine that there is no God or gods

2. Godlessness; immorality.

Atheist:

1. One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.


That would not include newborns, as they have no concept of god. Not being atheist does not make you a theist by default. I would deem it nontheist, as to represent a lack of a concept of a deity or god. Regardless of whether you consider god concepts to be ridiculous or not, you still have a concept of them if you are atheist, and either choose to deny them or simply disregard them as outrageous.

JGL53

I want to go on record - not proudly, just stating a fact - that it is with utter humility and humbleness that, using my admitted limited knowledge and finite mind, I honestly access (after decades of exposure) the claims of literalist supernatural religious belief in general and christinsanity in particular to be apparently nonsensical and useless at best, and at worse immoral/amoral and an obvious danger to peace, sanity, and the general welfare of the human race.

Or, more succinctly, I perceive such to be insane putrid buzzard manure. But that's just my 'humble' yet strong opinion.

If someone misinterprets my strong opinion as a lack of humbleness or as condescension, that's THEIR problem.

Shadowy Man

Come on... everybody's doing it.

Autonemesis

Fine. I am a non-theist.

Paul2

i hate to play word games, but how exactly are you using the word "deny?"

if you were to say that i deny your god, as in declare your definition to be untrue, i'd say ok.

if you were to say that i deny your god, as in refuse to accept, i would say no, as there is nothing to accept because he does not exist.

if you were to say that i deny your god, as in refusing to acknowledge him, i'd say no as since he does not exist, there is nothing to acknowledge.

That being said, i just deny one more god than you.

Vylo

autonemesis, you obviously have some concept of god, if you are commenting intellegently on these boards. No matter how outlandish these concepts may be you have chosen to ignore them as crazy, or to simply deny them. A newborn child has not had this opportunity or exposure.

Autonemesis

Atheism means "without theism." However one arrives at this viewpoint, those without theism are atheist, whether they are newborns or Newdows.

Vylo

Atheism does not mean without theism, you are using an incorrect definition. I showed the defintion of it earlier:

Atheism:

1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
The doctrine that there is no God or gods

2. Godlessness; immorality.


You can't deny or disbelief in something you have no concept of, and at the same time you can't affirm it.

Spenser

Since everyone is fighting over semantics...



Seeing as the baby would be 'atheist' and not atheism you are looking up the wrong word in the dictionary and according to the definition above (#2) the baby qualifies as atheist. The baby, not having knowledge of such things yet, is obviously godless...
:notworthy

Mageth

Why can't a baby just be a baby and leave it at that? Whether a baby is correctly called an atheist, atheistic, godless, non-theist or otherwise is pointless and pretty much useless as any kind of argument for anything, in any case.