Seriously, should these words even exist? I don’t think so. I prefer to say “Normal” person over “Atheist” person or “Nonbeliever” person.
The word “Atheism” denotes a negation of theism, but in reality, that negation of theism is what all newborns start with. That is the default behavior; that is the normal behavior. I never saw a Chimp at zoo going to Sunday Schools.
It is us, the human society in general, who dump this theism BS on kids, at an age when they can’t even reason by themselves (pretty convenient age to try to convince and convert eh?)
For context, my Dad has always been a skeptic, and as he became old, he started to be a hardcore agnostic - so I was never brought up in a family of faith (thankfully) - and so I never had to struggle with any “deconstruction”, as some of us had to. All my encounters with religion has been while interacting with my peers, colleagues and neighbors. To me, growing up without any faith was totally normal, because that’s how I happened to be raised. And by the time I encountered religion, I already had enough cognitive capacity to recognize and reject that as BS.
Enough ramblings, but my point is that theists brought in a claim (about invisible Sky Daddy) that can’t be proven, so the burden of proof stays with them. We don’t have to “negate” a fiction. I dislike the word “Atheist” (although I respect the intended purpose of that in this present time), but I still prefer to say we are “normal”.
If you aren’t talking about religion, then you don’t need the label at all. If someone brings up religion, then you just state you don’t believe. Getting wrapped up in proper labeling is creating a problem where there isn’t one. “Normal” or "default’ or any other labeling like that will just confused the issue when the majority considers themselves a believer in something. Why do you need the label? That will probably tell you how to approach this, not from you as the base but from the subject.
You’re not wrong that everyone is born without belief and learns it.But I think the human mind is wired for some type of religious thought - the anthropomorphism we evolved for group survival is strong, and leaches out to other things. So a bunch of kids born and growing up without influence by others would likely come up with some higher power that is controlling things they don’t understand. Critical thinking and scientific method to dispel this and give rational explanations is not that old in our civilization, and took a lot of effort to figure out. On their own, kids wouldn’t and would tend to go with what makes their brain satisfied, and that’s religion in a nutshell. So that is default, eventually.