Syamsu wrote:
(Nested quote removed.)
People are naturally pre-disposed to believe in God. Subjectivity is natural, as is also objectivity natural by the way.
The fact that subjectivity is a natural state of consciousness does not mean the we have a cognitive predisposition to believe in God, if you want to make that conclusion are you willing to explain how?
Infants already have an intuitive understanding that love and hate decide things.
Love and hate does not decide anything, love and hate influence our decisions. Loving and hating anything is not something that we can control, just like most other emotions they are subjective feelings we experience. Love and hate have nothing to do with the existence of God, so this is not evidence to support your claim.
The thought naturally occurs to people that there may be one who decides over all, because the thought is a simple generalization of looking at things in terms of freedom. The thought that there are 65 who decide over all, or 1 who decides half of everything does not so much occur naturally. The ideas of "one" and "all" are basic and given, while 65 and "half", you have to some work to think those up. So it is not lack of knowledge that leads to the supposition that God exists, but having emotions and straightforwardly accepting the legitemacy of emotions, that naturally predisposes to belief in God.
Again this does not support your claim, accepting the legitimacy of our emotions is just that, accepting.
Likewise you can see that adult atheists generally have a problem with accepting the legitemacy of subjectivity.
Atheist have a problem with accepting the legitimacy of other peoples subjectivity, not there own. The very definition of subjective means perspective or interpretation changes from the point of view of the subject, hence why it's not a valid process to gain true an accurate knowledge.
Mostly atheists only support to accept the existence of anything on an objective basis, when it can be measured or calculated, never subjectively. That is why atheists treat love and hate as being electro-chemical reactions in the brain, they do no support reaching the conclusion that love and hate exist on a subjective basis.
Some knowledge is acquired through personal experience, other knowledge is acquired through objective observations. Love and hate is emotional thus means it is subjective and requires personal experience. Yet two people may never experience love and hate in the same way, so no one can rightfully argue to have more knowledge of love or hate than someone else. So I don't no where you got your information that atheists don't accept that love and hate exist on a subjective basis from, are you willing to provide any references that support your claim so that the discussion can go further?
-- Updated July 30th, 2013, 4:59 am to add the following --
Belinda wrote:Newborn infants probably do have an unlearned ability to absolutely trust their caregiver, especially perhaps the nursing mother with her milky smell. In later life the religions interpret the natural reliance of the child on the main caregivers as 'God' up in the sky typically as I remember from the attractive hymns I learned in the infant classes.
It is the reinterpretation of natural and wholly functional orientation of the child that is not innate but is superimposed by the prevalent culture of belief.
A baby cannot be an atheist or anything else that depends upon self conscious cognition.
That maybe the case for affirmative or positive atheism that states they DO NOT believe in God, a child is born with an absence of belief in theism which is atheism by definition, no one can be born agnostic. Just like I was born not a doctor infants are born not theists (atheists).