Some Philistine once said..

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”

My question... In your opinion- Is it easier to convince a six year old; of a God, or of no God?

I don't know. What do you think?

Convincing him of no god would mean he has to convinced there was a god in the first place. Thus it can't be easier.

I'm ignoring the case where he hasn't been taught about God, as then you don't have to convince him of anything.

When you slither out of the womb, you are an atheist. Or so it seems, a Blank Slate in regards to god concepts. I think that is the view of Steve Pinker anyway, but I could be wrong. But the Human Stain begins its workings immediately.

I think that it is much easier, if the little kid doesn't have any alternatives that are vying for his consideration or even crosses his mind, lol, especially if those alternatives are vigorously stamped out, lol.

To atheists in the United States, for example, the middle finger, lol. To people of other cultures that have no knowledge of what that means to an American, it can seem that getting insulted from it is just as silly as believing in the Christian God, lol.

When a child first recognizes that the world operates in a basically orderly fashion (e.g. cause-->effect) , and when he or she first recognizes that there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong", is when the child knows that there must be a God. (This is known as "general revelation.")

Knowledge of Jesus Christ and his birth, life, death and resurrection typically requires knowledge culled from the Bible. ("Special revelation")

If that was true there would be no cultures without Gods but there are. Some people had to be thought the concept of God by believers.

Pirahã

Dreaming about God, Gods and Goddesses is like child's play. Dogma not required.

That's very interesting. I'll look into that.

Theism is only one kind of supernaturalism. There are other options, such as animism, polytheism, spiritual monism, etc.

1. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that the category "theism" would include polytheism (otherwise the term "monotheism" would be redundant, would it not?)

2. I am ignorant of any form of animism that could form a basis for the preconditions of intelligibility. The very few versions of animism that I have encountered were probably not sufficiently sophisticated enough to account for things like deduction, induction, uniformity of nature, and morality, etc.

People around here primarily use theism to refer to monotheism as distinct from polytheism. If you're using it differently, no problem, although I suspect this makes your claim less useful for Christian apologetic purposes.

Animism has been replaced or subsumed in much of the world by larger religions, but it still exists even in developed countries (eg Shinto in Japan). The basic idea of meaning and purpose, rules around behavior, and so on, are part of these viewpoints as well. While I'll agree that Big God religions are more useful in some ways in making the world intelligible, animistic and shamanistic religions can do an adequate job as well. Of course, so can many non-religious worldviews, eg Platonism, various versions of naturalism, etc.

Interesting. Maybe I'll start a thread where various worldviews can be discussed based upon their capacity to account for the preconditions of intelligibility.

I think that you guys need to define what you mean by God.

Let Hawking explain neutrinos to a six year old and let us see if he (the atheist) understands neutrinos.

The one who made the rules.

That would be fantastic. I've never heard a believer of any sort even try to do this accounting--except for one argument which gets immediately abandoned--so I'd be fascinated to see this accountability demonstrated or argued for.

Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, Gordon Clark, and John Frame are probably the most famous Christian philosophers who contributed to the development of the so-called Transcendental Argument for Existence of God (aka TAG). The argument purports to demonstrate that only Christian Theism can account for the preconditions of intelligibility.

Those are some of the guys I was thinking of, but they don't seem any more successful at actually providing an accounting than anybody else--just assertions. The strategy seems to rely on appealing to "the impossibility of the contrary," but that seems easily defeated.

This seems like a pretty lazy heuristic of understanding. It also seems to be completely false.

The answer to this question depends at least in part on the information the six year old has coming into the conversation. But I'm pretty sure you could "convince" them of either one if you're a trusted authority figure in their lives.

(I put quotes around convince because I doubt that this is a matter of convincing through logic and reasoned argumentation, but simply attempting to gain the child's assent.)

What rules?

Chaos is not describable.

Rules are sign of intelligence. Anything without intelligence cannot formulate rules. Wisdom must exist before rules can exist. And when there are rules than first there must be power to enforce them otherwise nothing would follow those rules.

Atoms must first follow some rules otherwise atoms wouldn't be describable.

That seems self-defeating, since you're actually using a word to describe it.

It is not.
Wavelengths are reflected off an object, and the human eye recognizes these wavelengths as color. When an individual sees the color black, he is seeing an object that absorbs all of the wavelengths of color, and reflects almost none.
Similarly when something doesn't reflect any rules, we call it Chaos.