I like Richard Dawkins

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by DanaC

The author of that column took his tweet that babies have no religion, suggested that this was implying that babies have a default theological position of atheism and then argued against that 'implied' meaning, rather than the actual thing that Dawkins said.

He did twist the words to imply that Dawkins was claiming that babies pondered theology, but the fact is that a complete lack of theological position is still atheistic, so his argument would still fall flat if Dawkins had said what he claimed. If Dawkins had used the words "theological position", it would have been a silly construction to use, because of the implication of theologist babies, but he still would have been technically correct. If you're going to make fun of someone by twisting their words, you should make sure that the twisted words aren't also true.

And ridiculing the idea of "default language" explicitly supports Dawkins' actual point and wording. If you wouldn't count a baby as an "English speaker", why count them as "Catholic"?

And the "nationality" part is just completely incorrect.

Amazingly dumb quote.

[DanaC]

Totally agree. And most of the 3000+comments it generated were basically arguing about the definition of atheism :P

[xoxoxoBruce]

Wouldn't babies be agnostic (don't know, don't care) rather than atheist (don't believe), or am I confused on the definitions?

[Pico and ME]

Babies believe in a god. Mom, of course.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Gods = slaves.

[DanaC]

Depends on your definition of atheism really. It has two meanings - Disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Disbelief is a conscious position, lack of belief may simply be an unconscious absence of belief. Literally it means 'without god' ( from Greek atheos, from a- 'without' + theos 'god'.)

So, the passive meaning of without belief would work for a baby.

Agnostic means: A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God

So, no, agnostic would be too much of a considered position to be appropriate in this context.

[xoxoxoBruce]

OK, sounds logical.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Depends on your definition of atheism really. It has two meanings - Disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Disbelief is a conscious position, lack of belief may simply be an unconscious absence of belief. Literally it means 'without god' ( from Greek atheos, from a- 'without' + theos 'god'.) ...

[bold mine]

The etiology behind the distinction is well established in science throughout leading research institutions. It's like people who are born without sight whom we call blind. For them, the world as we literally see it doesn't exist. They can appreciate some of it through their other senses, intellectually understand what sighted people tell them about the world beyond their available senses, even synthesize the world in their imaginations; but, that may not be anything like the reality of it and they might not believe it if they actually saw it.

Now we can look into the human organism and say there's a heart, there's some lungs, and there's a brain. We can even say look, there's a mutation in the RPE65 gene causing abnormal development of photoreceptor cells resulting in a blindness from birth we call Leber's congenital amaurosis. But we can't say look, there's a happiness or, there's a love or, there's a soul.

There are sights that some people can't see simply because of an unconscious lack of exposure and there are sights some people can't see because they were born without sight. Likewise, some people's lack of belief in God is simply an unconscious absence of belief while others who actually disbelieve were born without a soul. Human genetic mapping simply hasn't yet pinpointed the mutated gene responsible for the autosomal recessive disorder. The important thing to remember is that like blind people, @heists can be good people too.


Hope y'all enjoyed that little piece of fiction I just made up.

[orthodoc]

You're always good bedtime reading, sexobon.

[Big Sarge]

well all I know is some of y'all are going to Hell if you keep these heathen ways

[xoxoxoBruce]

Button poetry?