Athiest Propaganda on Deafault Assumption

Austin Cline

On Metacrock's Blog I have demonstrated certain studies show that religion is innate. The evdience is pretty strong for an innate religious sense. This blows away the use of the "default" that atheists try to employ,the mistaken notion that we "are all born atheists." Let's look at some illogical to uses atheists make of this assumption.


Austin Cline on Atheist Default

Do infants and very young children qualify as atheists? Most atheists will say so, working from the definition of atheism as “lacking belief in gods.” Theists tend to reject this definition, even if they don’t use the narrow definition of atheism as “denial of gods.” Why? If infants lack belief in the existence of gods, they can’t be theists - so why not atheists?

The evidence is huge that religious instinct is innate. Religion is not something that has to be trained into a child. The particular tradition and doctrines do but not the basic concept.

He goes on to quote:

In Atheism: The Case Against God, George Smith writes:

Upon close examination, it is likely that the objections to calling the uninformed child an atheist will stem from the assumption that atheism entails some degree of moral degeneracy. How dare I call innocent children atheists! Surely it is unfair to degrade them in this manner.

If the religionist is bothered by the moral implications of calling the uninformed child an atheist, the fault lies with these moral implications, not with the definition of atheism. Recognizing this child as an atheist is a major step in removing the moral stigma attached to atheism, because it forces the theist to either abandon his stereotypes of atheism or to extend them where they are patently absurd.

This is sheer lunacy. Not only are kids bron with innate senes of God or some "higher power" but they are not cognitively developed to the extent that they can actually doubt anything. They are no fits judges of God' existence either way. Calling them atheist is calling them communists. Can you say a baby is born a communist? That woudl be unethical if one labeled an infant with some tag phrase an opposition political group, or even his own. This is such obviously totalitarian thinking.

Yes here we have the dirty little secret guys like Cline want to keep under wraps, their movement is totalitarian.


several erroneous ideas on yahoo answers

These things are so silly because they just get anyone to answer. You ask "is chicken skin good for a dog" half the people who never owned a dog and know nothing about nutrition will say 'yes it's great."

Invisible talker says:

Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. As such it is the default position since when faced with a truth-claim the logical default is not to believe it.

Some atheists might go farther and believe there are no gods, but that is in excess of not believing in them. Thus the most inclusive definition of atheism, not believing in any gods, is the best IMHO.

Confronted with a truth claim "the logical appraoch" is the default to not believe, why is that logical? I confront you with the truth claim "It is wrong to kill" Is that something you feel is only logical to doubt as an automatic position? why?

Acid Zebra

Lack of belief in godS. godSSSSSSSSSSS.

What is it with religious people and ignoring the ~3700 other god-notions in these type of arguments? "God". Seriously.

It is what happens when someone tells you about all these gods and you think "what nonsense, are these warm fuzzy feelings and this old book of myth all you got?". You've considered the claim, and rejected it. It isn't a belief in itself as much as your lack of belief in leprechauns or schnnztlypops isn't a belief.

This statement makes no sense at all. He's talking about "You've considered the claim, and rejected it" that's not a default. He thinks plurality of God concepts cancel each other out which also makes no sense. It's much more logical to assume that people can mistaken in their ideas of God but still be right about the thing in general.


Derek

Delusions have to be instilled. The default assumption with no cultural indoctrination or peer pressure would be reality: atheism. Or, to phrase it more as you did, neither a "belief that X" nor a "lack of belief that X," but simply the absence of fantastical notions of deities.

Of course this guys' statement is ignorant hateful stupidity. It's disproved by teh innate religous instinct argumetn. Since it's not intellied it can't be called "delusion" The use of that term is just a point of Orwellian atheism where they change the meaning of the word to fit their propaganda. Whatever disagrees with my propaganda is insanity. That's about as Totalitarian as you can get. The KGB would be proud of them.

Fire

Mankind is over two MILLION years old and Christianity just two thousand years old so it is definitely the default!

That's typical of them to assume Christianity is the really only religion. They are really just reactionaries against Christianity. They don't care about Rege or Janism or Shinto they are not out to stop Kamies in Shinto. Humanity has had some from of religious instinct all along. The Neanderthals had it (see link to Metacrock's blog at the top).