Actually, even besides the whole theological question about predestination
and such, the "all babies are born 100% atheists" statement seems far too
strong.
First, it confuses the *belief* of atheism with a "neutral" state. As
Alister McGrath discusses in his recent "Dawkins' God," "Doubting," and "The
Dawkins Delusion," atheism is a *belief* that requires some degree of *faith
*. Like the decision to believe in God, the decision not to believe in God
is a choice a person makes among competing alternatives based on less than
complete or perfect evidence. Clearly, a newborn baby is not capable of
exercising such a choice.
Second, this statement seems to contradict what many contemporary atheists
believe about religious experience. Contemporary atheists such as Dawkins
tell us that people have in some ways been hard wired by evolution to be
predisposed to religious belief. This observation, the notion of religion
as a meme, allows them to suggest that the God of religious belief isn't
"real," but rather is a false belief that at one time enhanced survival
value but that does not correspond to reality. They of course suggest that
this belief can and should be elided now that they have supposedly explained
its provenance. But then, if this account of religion is even partly
correct, it cannot follow that "all babies are born 100% atheists." It
would be more accurate, under the hard-wired / meme view, to suggest that
"all babies are born with varying degress of predisposition
*towards*receptivity to religion memes."
(Actually, here the contemporary discussion of religious experience tends to
become incoherent, IMHO. On the one hand, religion is like a malicious
virus, that takes advantage of its host without benefitting the host; on the
other, it is rooted in social behaviour that conferred survival advantages
and became hard-wired in the hominid biochemistry; on yet another hand (yes,
three hands,) it is a "meme," a mysterious, unobservable, immaterial entity
that was originally incorporated into a human memeplex -- another
mysterious, unobservable, immaterial entity -- because of some survival
value. It seems to me that this is more a set of ad-hoc explanations than a
carefully thought out theory; and in any event, even this ad-hoc set of
explanations generally contradicts the theory that babies are born
atheists.)
On 9/2/07, philtill@aol.com <philtill@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
> "all babies are born 100% atheists."
>
> Maybe not depending on what you believe about their spirits rather than
> their minds (take John the Baptist in his mother's womb, for example). But
> certainly all babies are born 100%...
>
> 1. illiterate
> 2. ignorant
> 3. helpless
> 4. non-scientific
> 5. irrational
> 6. undiscerning
> 7. demanding
> 8. selfish
>
> So are these, like atheism, supposed to be positive qualities since we see
> them in babies?
>
> Phil
> ------------------------------
> Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail<http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/mailtour/aol/en-us/index.htm?ncid=AOLAOF00020000000970>
> !
>
>
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Received on Sun Sep 2 15:12:04 2007
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