Every conscious life starts out atheist, and to deviate from atheism one must first conceptualize the basic principles of something before they can believe in it.
When a baby human, animal, etc., is born, the concept of deities does not occur until after first learning a variety of other things, such as the idea that a deity could even exist in the first place, hence everyone is obviously born "absent of belief in deities (and supernatural agents)."
I submit that in order to believe in something one must first become aware of the option to believe in it, and so one cannot accurately claim that they were born as a theist (believing in deities), as an anti-theist (believing there are no deities), or even as an agnostic (contending that deities cannot be proven or disproven).
Please share your thoughts -- I encourage you to express yourself freely, and as boldly as you care to be.
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I agree. Have a child born without anyone telling him/her anything about a god and religion and let's see if he/he would even have to think of such a thing. It is the parents of the child that teaches him/her such things and the influence of religious sects that would always announce their so called words of wisdom to the existence of a god that everyone should fear and worship.
I agree. A child only becomes religious when it has the cognitive ability. I was not brought up in any religion. My parents are non-believers but I found my own way in terms of religion. Looking back, it angers me that religion is forced upon children in schools. I went to a very racially varied school with many different cultures and faiths yet in assemblies we had to pray, we were told that bible stories were true and we also had to say grace before lunch. What angers me is that religion has such a huge influence on things it really shouldn't have influence on. If people want to believe and have faith, fair enough. But, given that England is now very varied in terms of race, culture and religion, it should be kept out of education and politics. This is a modern age, apparently, so why is something so old having such a massive influence? What my point is, many children cannot embrace the natural state of atheism due to thousands of external influences. I was allowed to decide for myself what I believed in or didn't believe in, I wasn't overly indoctrinated by my experiences in school but that cannot be said for many. Lots of non-athiests don't understand why one would choose atheism but if they maybe had more open choice in what they believed from the beginning, would they have chosen to believe in something there is no evidence of existing?
Our natural state of consciousnes is the perfect balance of and open mind that is still untouched by theories and doctrines. In a perfect world, we would all be educated to think for ourselves and not to follow any social indoctrination patterns. But as long as there are interests of a few poweful people in the way, this wont ever happen.