Quote from stu:
As mentioned, humans do appear to be 'hard wired' , but by specific limited definition, not by the general descriptions you make. Social creatures yes, but not innately so. Tribal creatures more so, but again not innately. Survival instincts are mostly innate, but not always. Otherwise there would be no suicide and particularly not by comparatively young children.
Humans are intrinsically social creatures as classified by social evolutionists. To sub categorizes as tribal only reinforces the notion that homo sapiens are social creatures. In any event, anomalies aside, we should agree on the general attributes of the majority of humans.
However, politics are the very last thing which make people social creatures, certainly in the hard wired context. A more partisan sectarian method of fulfilling social activities is difficult to contemplate. I think you are jumping to innacurrate ratiocinations in equating desires to be social creatures and politics to hard wiring. They do not correspond.
Politics is a function of our social nature. It is the natural extension of our social natures. It's how we guide our social interactions. Does a baby possess a political nature? Absolutely, given that politics is just a function of our social natures. But you will only see it manifest when it develops the congnitive reasoning skills to do so. Just look at how children interact in a dayschool or kindergarten. Studies have already been done on this aspect of humanity so I won't belabor it here. But suffice it to say, the disposition is there.
No, politics are essentially to do with tribal instincts. It is fair to point out there is nothing of an underpinning innateness in regard to politics, unless politics is only about instinctive survival. The nuances of politics are the complex and sophisticated machinations around learned social advantages on how to best serve yourself and your chosen tribe. Ideals are taught instructed and then discovered. They are not innate. The predisposition to enable and acquire awareness and knowledge is the thing 'hard wired' , not the things acquired.
Ok, sure, the nuances of "todays" politics are complex, but they had far simpler roots going back. Was it survival instinct that started it? I believe it was the combination of the homo sapiens survival instinct as well as his innate social nature that did.
A propensity for religion reflects a leaning toward superstition. I don't think you are suggesting a baby is innately superstitious or religious. if I read correctly, your argument is it's the things that come from an innate survival instinct that teach superstition. That does not make superstition itself innate.
Correct in part. The susceptibility towards embracing superstition is innate in humans. Always has been. You can even see it in the homo sapiens cousin, the neanderthal. If it weren't, you wouldn't see religion so widespread and so easily accepted inspite of the fact that as a human develops, his congnitive reasoning skills mostly increase.
Being born ignorant of anything means being born without it, without knowledge or awareness of it. You apparently recognize so in one of your later posts, which I think you very reasonably acknowledge many atheists may well not be able to chose religion simply because, they like everyone, are born without theism, but on hearing and leaning of it understand it makes no ground in reason or rational sense and therefore dishonest to accept its claims.The tendency to drift towards certain accepted social constructs such as religion superstition or such other fanciful ideas, is learned , is not innate and is subject to fashion. What was accepted as inviolate by society at large years ago is not even thought worthy of consideration nowadays. There is nothing innate in religion superstition or politics.
The interesting part of your argument for me is the question of there being no atheist culture in antiquity. This in a way, although I disagree with your statement itself, is at the nub of the meaning I am trying to explain and discuss with you.
It is for the very reason that there is theism in the world that causes every child to be atheist at birth. The baby has no innate knowledge of either states. To the baby there is no consideration past feeling uncomfortable and hungry. To others who have learned that theism exists, the baby is yet without theism, therefore to these onlookers it is factually atheistic.
Those who want to perpetuate religious superstition into the child will then intervene to teach or exert influence. With the intentional effect of -- how not to be atheist.
Yes, but atheism is not ignorance. Atheism is a conclusion. You see, I would agree that humans are born atheist if atheism has been and currently is a majority view in the world. Currently, it's somewhere around 8-10% of the world's population. But that's mostly in western world countries who have had the luxury of free thought and philosophical development. And, yes, one of the definitions of atheism is "a lack of belief in gods." However, there is no known culture in antiquity that was atheist. This is important because if the claim is that we are born atheist but become theist by teaching, an atheist culture would show this to be true. Just think. Perhaps one human going back thousands of years conjured up some proto-religion. If humans were born atheist, that proto-religion should not have taken root. But since the opposite is true, in that a proto-religion did take hold and eventually evolved into more structured and dogmatic religions, it clearly shows that there is an innate desire in humans to want to believe in fanciful things. Since that is the case, we can't say that humans are born atheist nor theist. But we can say that humans are born with a strong susceptibility for belief in fanciful things.
That is their condition. That is their predisposition.
At some point in the past, some homo sapien communicated his imaginations to another. The other believed it because, well that is the human disposition to do so. Then it was passed on and so forth. And given our innate social nature, groups began to indentify themselves by this imagination. Then dogmas were formed. Etc, Etc.
Atheism must be taught or acquired in somewhat like manner that theism is taught. This is so because humans will imagine fanciful things left to their own devices and eventually communicate these ideas. A baby born to atheist parents will be in a household that shuns things related to theism and in fact teach the child that there is no god or to question such an idea explicitly and/or implicitly. They will answer the ultimate questions for him or her during the child's formative years but from the perspective of a materialist.
Given human history and human nature, there is only one responsible conclusion: humans are born far more susceptible to fanciful ideas than rational ones. But they are not functionally born atheist, nor theist. They're simply ignorant of the world at large.
An interesting discussion would be; which came first in human evolutionary development? Atheism or theism?
You could argue that before they had the cognitive reasoning skills to imagine, they were atheist. But the problem with that might be one of semantics which must rely on the definition that atheism means, "without belief." But then, other higher order sentient animals can also be deemed atheist. All the primates until homo sapien and homo sapiens neanderthal were atheist then. But then again, they didn't demonstrate all that much imagination.
"Without belief in gods," when applied to humans, must entail without the ability to believe in order to state that the innate nature of all humans is atheist. With the ability to believe having to be taught. As that is what would undo that alleged innate atheist disposition.
In my opinion, the proper definition for atheism is "one who disbelieves in gods or gods" or "the doctrine that there is no god."
Why do I think that? Because atheism is about rational thought. Rational thought must be taught and communicated. We know that humans left to their own device will invariably conjure up irrational thoughts which can and do lead to fanciful ideas. To challenge or examine those fanciful ideas, you will need to concentrate to rational thinking. That's why it took many thousands of years for atheism to show up on the scene of human development. They credit Epicurius (sp?) with the seeds of atheist rational thought. A knowledge base had to be built up before humans could even begin to entertain the opposite of what was born of their innate natures.
But for what you are thinking, in the sense that babies are born without religion, which of course is true, I think the better if not proper definition is non-religion. So babies are born in a state of non-religion. But non-religion is not the antithesis to religion. It's just a blank slate/canvas.
All other offshoot definitions of atheism, given the word's etymology, were just necessary attempts to remove the perjorative nature of the word. But to include the state of a new born human into the definition of atheism, while seemingly correct, is IMO, intellectual dishonesty given not only the history of humanity, but the commonly observed nature of humans.
We probably won't agree and that's fine. The current dogma in the atheist community is to state that we're all born atheist. This would be an important position to take if one believes that atheism would be the better doctrine and worldview for humanity going forward. It's as if by adopting atheism, we're going back to our roots in humanity and will be able to continue our seemingly peaceful evolution before religion took hold.
