I've spoken to more than a few atheists and debated with them matters of faith. Not a few of them have made the statement that all babies are atheists until we adults corrupt their innocence and train them to believe in a God that does not exist. For a long time, I didn't know how to respond to this. I instinctively objected to it, because I believe that we are all moral beings and in fact that our knowledge of God is trained OUT of us as we grow older unless we are helped along the way by those who encourage us to continue connecting the dots between our prayers and God's actions. However, I had nothing to point to in human history to prove my point. Neither did they, mind you, since they can't talk to the babies and ask them, they just assumed they were in the right. However, as the defender of the faith, the burden of proof lies with me.
Today, I was washing dishes and contemplating matters of faith. My husband read off a post about the proof that violent video games are not the cause of violence being that wars and violence existed long before those things were around. He also quipped that this is proof that Christianity is not the cause of all wars, since wars have been going on long before Christianity existed. However, that led me to thinking that it was not proof that religion didn't cause wars since religion has been around since the beginning of mankind. That's when I realized with some surprise that I had found the proof that all babies are NOT born atheists.
Ignoring the notion that God created human beings and taught them personally from their earliest days, a notion which is from the Judeo-Christian theology, and depending entirely upon evolution for explanation of man's existence we are left to posit that the first human being was born from a pair of apes. Now, if all men were truly born atheists, this begs the question: Who taught the first man his religion? The apes who parented him? Surely not, unless atheists are claiming that religion is an animal instinct of some sort, in which case I would like for them to point to the evidence they have that animals create rites of worship and rituals to follow. Give me a single cathedral built by rabbits and I shall at least admit the possibility that religion came first through animals to mankind.
I have never known an atheist to go from not believing in God to believing in God without serious thought put into it and much internal struggle. After all, it's a far more comfortable world when you make yourself a god and then get to be in charge of how things go. Are we to believe that the first man, born an atheist, adopted a religion out of thin air? That he had no evidence to base his beliefs upon? That although he was born not believing, he decided to believe for no apparently good reason with no greater motivation than a desire to explain things to himself? If man did create the first religion, wouldn't the religion be more likely to reflect what was easy for him to do rather than what was challenging or difficult?
The truth is that I don't think all babies are born atheists. I think they see far more clearly the spiritual realm than we do, and that it is we who train them out of it by telling them that what they see isn't real.
Today, I was washing dishes and contemplating matters of faith. My husband read off a post about the proof that violent video games are not the cause of violence being that wars and violence existed long before those things were around. He also quipped that this is proof that Christianity is not the cause of all wars, since wars have been going on long before Christianity existed. However, that led me to thinking that it was not proof that religion didn't cause wars since religion has been around since the beginning of mankind. That's when I realized with some surprise that I had found the proof that all babies are NOT born atheists.
Ignoring the notion that God created human beings and taught them personally from their earliest days, a notion which is from the Judeo-Christian theology, and depending entirely upon evolution for explanation of man's existence we are left to posit that the first human being was born from a pair of apes. Now, if all men were truly born atheists, this begs the question: Who taught the first man his religion? The apes who parented him? Surely not, unless atheists are claiming that religion is an animal instinct of some sort, in which case I would like for them to point to the evidence they have that animals create rites of worship and rituals to follow. Give me a single cathedral built by rabbits and I shall at least admit the possibility that religion came first through animals to mankind.
I have never known an atheist to go from not believing in God to believing in God without serious thought put into it and much internal struggle. After all, it's a far more comfortable world when you make yourself a god and then get to be in charge of how things go. Are we to believe that the first man, born an atheist, adopted a religion out of thin air? That he had no evidence to base his beliefs upon? That although he was born not believing, he decided to believe for no apparently good reason with no greater motivation than a desire to explain things to himself? If man did create the first religion, wouldn't the religion be more likely to reflect what was easy for him to do rather than what was challenging or difficult?
The truth is that I don't think all babies are born atheists. I think they see far more clearly the spiritual realm than we do, and that it is we who train them out of it by telling them that what they see isn't real.
I find this topic pretty fascinating, and I am inclined to disagree with you on your conclusion. I have also written a short piece about this as well on my blog.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple things I might point out, but the biggest leap you are making is from the intellect that a baby is born with compared to the knowledge that an adult would have. In your scenario, at some point man created religion as you say, 'out of thin air.' Well actually no. You would have to do a little further study on the ancient religions that developed into what we have today.
For example, ancient Egyptian mythology is filled with gods all presumably to explain some aspect of nature that the Egyptians did not know the cause of. Yearly flooding of the Nile Valley is one such event. We no longer believe in the Egyptian gods because we now have natural explanations that replace what the explanation of the gods used to satisfy.
The ancient Greeks used gods to explain human passions. We no longer believe in Zeus, because we have other methods of understanding human passions.
So there is a president established showing that man created gods to explain the things he did not understand. Once he learned to understand, the gods fade away.
For more on this, consider looking into the God of the Gaps Argument.
Babies are trained and have always been trained socially to accept the gods of the culture. This explains how babies in one culture typically will remain a believer in the gods of that culture in later life. Born in a different culture, that same baby would have different beliefs.
My article: We are all born Atheist; Beliefs are learned.
In case you are interested.
Either way, the topic is very interesting.
Steven,
ReplyDeleteYou are making a REALLY big leap intellectually to say that it was "natural" for our ancestors to observe natural phenomenon and explain it by saying "it must have been a god or gods". The truth is that people are motivated to adopt the least complicated belief possible, but organized religion is inherently complex. There were plenty of other, easier explanations. Why not say that sea turbulence was caused by a really big sea monster, especially since a sea faring people would have seen exactly that kind of thing happen, rather than claiming it to be a god or gods that then require worship? Moreover, just because one baby born atheist decides to believe in it, that doesn't mean that everyone else is going to agree. Yet we saw that organized religion was a common thing among men, that there were MANY commonalities among the various religions, and that the differences were largely grouped geographically. It's actually suggestive of all men believing the same thing at one point and then diverging as they become separated from one another along geographical lines.