Developmental Atheism

I think that most atheists in Western society have passed through a series of conceptual stages:

1) blank-slate aconceptual at birth (to coin a neologism);

2) magic-thinking acceptance of the simplest, most widely publicized explanation ("God did it" theistic stage);

followed by 3)

a) disbelief in deities (atheistic non-acceptance of deistic or theistic claims)

or,

b) uncertainty (agnosticism = we can't know either way).

atheism