Despite us both being atheists, my roommate and I had a disagreement on the usage of the word atheist - are babies born atheists, having a lack of belief in any gods, or do we enter the world with insufficient knowledge of the question to be labeled one way or the other..? I recognize this is a semantic query and not terribly important, but it does go towards clarifying the usage of the word "atheist," and I'm curious to hear opinions/insight. Thoughts..?
The term Atheist (the opposite of theist) means you lack a belief in god or gods. The term Agnostic (the opposite of gnostic) refers to whether or not you believe 100%, or if you have some doubt. Every Atheist is either gnostic or agnostic. Just like every theist is either gnostic or agnostic. In my opinion, babies are born with only the senses they are born with (not every baby is born with sight, hearing, etc), and are taught (whether directly or indirectly) everything else as they grow and mature. Religion is taught. If there were no religion in the world (what a wonderful thought) babies wouldn’t be born thinking there was.