Master Media Speakersprovides an interesting bio of American Atheists’ Dave Silverman.
Beyond the usual, he is this and has done that, there are two points of interest. One is that he fits the typical and properly stereotypical atheist profile:
…National Spokesperson for American Atheists…Dave Silverman has been an Atheist since he was six years old…
This is very typical as many, many atheists reject God’s existence based on a child’s, childhood and childish misconception of God and their theology is stillborn then and there never to develop.
This is, perhaps, why so very many atheists demand, fallaciously, that belief in God is tantamount to belief in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, a “Sky Daddy,” an “invisible friend” and even the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Invisible Pink Unicorns.
In this regard, there is a YouTube playlist dedicated “Santa Syndrome case studies” wherein evidence is brought forth that show a correlation between young age rejection of Santa Clause and young age rejection of God.
The second point of interest is the statement:
Dave has been married to a religious Jewish woman for fifteen years and has an eight-year old daughter who has already beaten him in a fair-and-square debate!
Unfortunately, to what the debate pertained is not stated…but one can imagine.
Some atheists actually claim that we are all born atheists. Of course, this depends on our definition of “atheism” which has actually varied quite a bit within the history of atheism. If “atheism” is a positive assertion of God’s non-existence then no, we are not born atheists. If “atheism” is merely a “lack of belief in God” then perhaps we are and also, chinchillas are atheists (although, they are likely not) and so are sea cucumbers.
It seems as though those many atheists who reject God at such a very early age often do so by making category mistakes. They first rebel against “religion” and/or overbearing religious parents/communities. Then they fallaciously move towards rejecting God rather than simply and rightly rejecting manmade hierarchical, authoritative, abusive, religious systems.
Some make the fallacious claim that it was upon discovering that there were many religions they realized that they could not all be true and thus rejected them all. The real problem behind this is manifold and shows that little children are simply not intellectually prepared to make such life altering decisions.
For example, if the child discovered that various people had various answers to 2+2= would they conclude that since there are a variety of opinion, none of them are correct and so there is no answer to 2+2=?
Granting that mathematics is different than philosophy or theology. However, the point is that the atheist claims that variety of opinion amounts to all opinions being wrong…but not really, as we shall see. Now, of course, this is not applied to anything at all in any other arena of life as a variety of people have a variety of opinion on everything.
The bottom line is that the youthful atheist discovers that there were many religions, conclude that they could not all be true, rejected them all and then do what? They then claim that atheist is the one single absolute truth. Of course, considering the various views on what atheism is, as a concept and even a grammatical definition, they should reject it, as well.
In short, as many problems as there are with atheism, the fact that some many atheist became atheist at an early age make for even more problems—for them and the invalidity of their views.
Of course, if atheists want to back off from their consoling delusion of being more erudite than thou and that atheism requires no more intellect than that which is mustered by a newborn or a child: so be it.
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