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VGPolyglot on 14 January 2018
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JWeinCom said:
VGPolyglot said:

I only went to Kindergarten in the US though. I don't believe in God, an afterlife, fate, etc. However, what we are not arguing is whether or not atheism is a real position or concept, we are disagreeing fundamentally of what atheism is. How are you going to expect a baby with no concept of god to explain what atheism is? And that is why it is important to have knowledge of the subject. How can you be an atheist if you don't even know what atheism is or means? (By the way I'm not saying this personally to you, I'm talking of your definition where someone who doesn't have the concept of it can still somehow be one).

An apple, so far as I can tell, has no concept of being an apple.  Yet, it is still an apple, because it has all the qualities that we have defined for apples.

Likewise, an atheist can be an atheist regardless of whether or not they can explain it.  

Let's define an atheist as someone who is convinced (believes) that god (in this case yahweh) exists.  Suppose we had a person in an uncontacted tribe of people.  That person is fully capable of forming concepts like gods, but has never heard of yahweh.  Would you say that this person believes in god or not?  It's a binary position, so it has to be one or the other.  I'd say he does not believe is the accurate answer.



Of course, if you define atheism as actually rejecting god, then you would need a concept to reject.  Because rejecting, like believing, is active and not passive.  But, I don't believe I've personally met or seen any atheists who define atheism in that way.  

The difference being that an apple is a state of being, something that is composed in a specific matter in a specific way. On the other hand, atheism specifically refers to beliefs, thus you need to have a certain belief in order to be one.  I don't understand your second paragraph, I assume you mean to say that an atheist is someone who believes that God doesn't exist, rather than does exist? I don't have a belief that narrowly defined myself, as mean deities in general. Obviously it's impossible to know every single deity, but if you are actively aware of the deity/deities, and aware that the non-belief of the deity/deities exists, then you can be an atheist if you choose to not believe in the deity/deities. So, he may be an atheist in that he doesn't believe in the deities that he's aware of, but you still can't say he rejects Yahweh if he is not even aware of him. Yes, he may not believe in Yahweh, but not believing in something is not the same as rejecting something. I consider atheism to be the rejection of the existence, as I said before calling a baby an atheist doesn't really do anything to advance the debate.