Children are born atheists or with a God gene. Which is it?

Neither. We are born without any bias at all. Religion and atheism are both biased in their ways of believing or not believing. Humans are born without any belief or bias, thus we are neither religious or atheist. We have to learn these things from our parents as we grow. Most religious indoctrination happens early.

Humans do have a genetic tendency to need to believe in something better than themselves, however. This thing may be come to be called "God" for some people, or "science" for others.

I'd have to say that human beings are born with curiosity. If that curiosity isn't satisfied by facts, people will draw their own conclusions in time - although probably long after they are "children." Even the most isolated societies on the planet have some sort of deity that they revere which (at least in their eyes) explains the unexplainable. That's not a gene, unless you consider the genome in toto; it's just the "hard-wiring" that LEADS to a belief in time. Some come to the conclusion that there is a god; perhaps there are others to whom the concept never occurs. I'm not a sociologist or psychologicst, so I don't know about that. I would have to say that children are NOT born atheists; they're just born without knowledge, and will fill the gap with whatever they can as they get older and start asking questions.

There is no God gene. That's not how genes work. Certainly there are a whole bunch of genetically caused psychological quirks which predispose humans to believing in gods. Specifically, humans are inclined to see human intervention even in random acts.

The God Gene gene has been renamed by Carl Zimmer as

A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study

Ideas of God or gods are highly dependent on what society you live in. There may be a gene that makes some people slightly more predisposed to believe in their own local gods.

In my experience atheists do not dwell too much or "cling" on the God Gene, nor is it an atheist's argument. Everyone can agree that humans are predisposed to believe in God. This is weak evidence for the existence of God, that's all.

IF God doesn't exist, it's easy to see how people might have come upon the idea that He does exist. The human mind naturally looks for evidence of intentional behavior, as a warning system against attacks. It is much better, for a caveman, to be paranoid than to assume that the wolf sneaking up on him is actually the wind. So as you take the random acts of fate, and look for a pattern, the mind often conjures one up.

On the other hand, we have the "God part of the brain" people, who claim that perception of God is just the behavior of a little piece of the brain. They say that if you injure that part of the brain, people no longer believe in God. I say that would happen even if God were real. For example, there are people who have a stroke and lose their ability to tell the difference between faces. I still know that faces are both different and recognizable, even though the stroke victim can't tell.

Science can be used to explain away anything. You still have to fill in the blanks. The arguments on either side are specious and dull. There's no way to prove that any of you reading this, are actual people with consciousness and not fleshy robots who just mimic my behavior, but it would be rude to keep bringing that up. I prefer to relate to you as if you are real. God may or may not exist, but if you keep going gaga on that, you'll not be able to have a relationship with him. Get on with life.

If people had any idea how warped their perceptions were they'd probably start pounding their head against the wall. It's not necessary to be right all the time or, even really, ever. Just get on with life and be done with it.

So not only are you ignorant to the fact atheists are neither organized nor do they agree on everything but you are also ignorant to the simple concepts of genes. Not everyone would have this god gene.

By definition of the word atheist which is listed in several dictionaries as being the absence of the belief in a god which means someone who doesn't have a belief in a god. Since you cannot know about a something until you are told about it, your belief in it is absent.

edit: Also, I investigated your claims that "Atheists made up the god gene." Dr Dean Hamer has spoken several times and mentioned "God" multiple times, nowhere in anything that I could find indicated he is or was an atheist. So the god gene was "made up" by you believers. But the point you so foolishly miss, is that I don't care if he was or wasn't a believer. His reasearch can be viewed by everyone and investigated by everyone.

First off I was raised Babtist but don't subscribe to any religeon now. Nor am I atheist but I hear just as much hate coming from your side of the fence as I do theirs.Sounds to me like the second one is more agnostic than atheist though. Why don't people worry about themselves and not those who don't think the same. Get over it!! How many interpretations for the bible are there anyway?? Which is it? The one that's convenient for you? See sounds stupid huh? Just as stupid as the God gene does.

because different Atheists will say different things. We're actually individuals, unlike religious folk, who think as a group. the atheists on Y!A don't meet up to figure out "how to stump the creationists this time" or whatever.

The only time I've ever heard of a "god gene" was as a joke, anyway...

EDIT: I just looked it up. The reason it's not a scientific theory I've heard of is that its not even a scientific theory at all. It's a hypothesis. If you don't understand why it is not considered accepted fact, see my wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Children at a young age do not know one way or the other; it's based on different opinions, obviously other atheist's will say that they are born with it and the believers might say they are born with it. Personally I don't think children are born with anything in mind about God! People around them will talk about God and then they will base it on which they want. If they decide that they are atheist's then that will be it, they wasn't born with a God gene and then decided to ignore it, people can choose and decide what beliefs they have, everyone has a different opinion on what they wanna believe!

Everyone is individual to their beliefs and they have chose that by themselves

Everyone is born atheist. Nobody is born knowing about any gods, so it's inevitable.

Mankind has evolved intelligence, fuelled by our desire to have explanations for everything we encounter. We want to know what causes lightning, why that mountain blew its top, why water is wet, etc. In the past however many of the answers were WAY beyond our reach. Gods were invented as a stop-gap measure, allowing us to move on to other things until we develop our knowledge sufficiently to give them another go.

As neither an atheist nor a person of religion, I can pretty much assure you that there is no such thing as a god gene. There might be some argument for a genetic predisposition that might result in atheism or religious belief given the right environmental conditions, but I doubt it.