Let's not get too caught up on the individual level either...what would happen if children never exposed to religious/spiritual thought we raised and lived in a utopia of sorts. After generations of children in isolation, would this population exhibit spiritual thought?
I think it's safe to say that spiritual thought would arise on its own, since that's exactly what happened in humanity's distant past.
I think it's also safe to say that spirituality is a fundamental aspect of a human. When we look at the basic functions of people, like gathering food, making shelter, and reproducing, we see that these things have always been around but have changed as humanity's cognition evolved. It's the same with spirituality, which we can broadly define as the question "what is the ultimate nature of reality?"
Tribal foragers believed the world was composed of capricious animistic spirits. For example, the myths and folklore of native North American tribes.
Horticultural societies, which historically correlate with an aggressive warrior culture, perceived there to be powerful entities running the show, who were generally the embodiment of the warrior mindset. We can think of Greek and Norse pantheons, as well as ancient Egyptians and Mayans.
In agrarian societies, we begin to see a mythic-membership culture arise. Agrarian populations were much larger, so in order to maintain stability, we evolved creeds that could unite people previously divided by kinship or tribal identity. The ultimate nature of the world, from this perspective, is that there is a divine patriarchal judge who runs the show.
A funny thing happens when humanity industrializes and rationality emerges. We perceive a rational order to the universe, one which does not need a creator god to explain its existence. But the spiritual line of inquiry is mistaken for the mythic level of development; we equate Spirit in any form with pre-rational thought, and reject spirituality and religion as useful or necessary in pretty much any way. Generally speaking.
As industrialized nations transitioned to an informational social structure, we see pluralistic (post-rational) culture emerge. The general consensus about reality at this stage is that there is no pregiven and objective world, there are only perspectives which are enacted. Specific spiritual attitudes vary widely, religion is sometimes deconstructed and given new meaning, but most probably would say that 'what is true for me isn't neccesarily true for you.'
History is much more messy than all of that, but these general patterns of development are pretty evident. The porpoise here is to show that spirituality, once it arose, changed form but was never discarded; at all stages of development, people have questions about the nature of reality, and they formulate answers according to their framework.
One, can you not edit your post four freaking times? It sends me a 'blah quoted you' notification EVERY SINGLE TIME.
You need to look up the different forms of atheism, there are quite a few, though I will only discus the necessary ones here.
Atheism in a broad sense is a rejection of belief in the existence of deities, in a narrower sense, the specific belief that there are no deities, and most inclusively, it is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.
'Absence' being the important word.
The argument that we are 'all born atheist' is an old one. It was a term quoted from a late 1700's philosopher the Baron d'Holbach.
Basically, there are different interpretations on what atheism is/its nature. There is implicit and explicit atheism. Implicit atheism "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it", while explicit atheism is the opposite, consciously rejecting it. A baby, ignorant and unable to comprehend the higher parts of philosophical understanding would be considered an implicit atheist. I, an educated person knowing of religion and rejecting it based on logic and reasoning would be considered an explicit atheist.
There are many different was to describe atheism. I suggest some research before throwing around the definition argument, especially in a philosophy discussion.
*drops mic, exits left*
Corrections needed to be made. Not sure if you're trying to be funny, but you're coming across as pretty hostile. It's pretty easy to get rid of notifications, isn't it?
Anyway, I was presenting a definition that made sense to me, so that my statement would be clear. My argument was not intended to account for every possible definition. So nothing needs to be changed there; the argument holds true with the definition I gave.
Besides, that was the least significant part of my post.
That said, I find it pretty misleading to characterize people who don't understand what theology, god, or spirituality are to be atheist. They aren't any kind of '-theist' at all, and a different term should be used to describe them than the one that refers to people who do understand those things. "Born atheist" may be an old argument, but it isn't a very good one in my opinion.
