UncannyDanny wrote:
I absolutely disagree. When you're young, you tend to think about things that you are interested in, while learning about things that happen on front of you while growing up, but you still feel confused about stuff that you don't understand. Personally, what we believe in and how we believe is all depending on how people and experiences teach us and how they affect our lives to give us our knowledge and choice what we want to believe in. So, in conclusion, we are not born atheists, we just are what we are.
I would contend otherwise. What people believe and think is not merely a what of environment or what one is taught. Human beings have a capacity for individual ideas, imagination, reasoning, and independent thinking, which helps form what one thinks and believes. While culture may influence thinking, it does not wholly effect it. It is because of this individual capacity to think and produce ideas, symbols, and notions of meaning and value, that culture exists in the first place. If it weren't for people thinking up things, the society would have nothing with which to create common ideas and nothing with which to furnish a culture.