I think your framework is actually quite clear, especially in how you separate ontological claims from epistemological positions—that’s something a lot of everyday discussions blur.
Credit goes to AI. What I posted was the outcome of a short but fruitful discussion with one of our new playmates. I have a thread on theism, if you’re interested
Yeah I agree, but for context, I did very well. Finished with first class and was often graded among the top of the class. The point I was making was more that I am familiar with the topic, and have engaged heavily with the material, and that you are unwarranted in jumping to the conclusion that I haven’t.
What question in particular are you saying I shouldn’t have asked?
OK, and this doesn’t contradict anything that I’ve said. The discussion is about the utility of certain definitions over others, and that those that say they do know that God doesn’t exist (Aron Ra), are a category of people, and they are unlike those that say they don’t know. You seem to not be tracking what I’m doing. The type of hard/strong atheist i’m making reference to here are in opposition to the agnostic, and in some way paired with the theist on the epistemological issue. That’s the point. My classification seeks to make these differences more clear in the hope of making the conversation clearer and more productive. I often see a lot of people who state they are atheist, to hold agnostic positions when on the back foot, but switch quite readily to a more hard atheism position in different contexts or when discussing things among themselves. I see it used more often as a shield.
Again, I don’t really see which question you think I’m asking that “shouldn’t have been asked” if I had more exposure, when I have had plenty of exposure, still see the benefit of my OP, and don’t see how you mentioning people who soften their claim can be framed as an objection to anything I’ve said.
Ok
You say you’ve studied the material on the topic and yet you seek clarification.
Correct. I did mention about certain advantages some stances have.
I agree, weak atheism can be conflated with agnosticism and strong atheism, when backed into a corner, can change goal posts to weak atheism. That’s one of the reasons why I broached the topic of antitheism (that God is a hidden desire to serve a celestial dictator).
Also I second the motion for clear-cut demarcation of these various positions, otherwise only a source of confusion.
So, how’s the discussion going? Have you reached a verdict?
Why would God have to be an old man in the sky to have attributes?
Which ones have you seen and how does that cause issues for you exactly? The argument for a necessary existence isn’t that controversial. It’s probably the least controversial of the attributes. Atheists can see the need for it as well (take Graham Oppy for example). The discussion is less about whether there is a necessary existence or not, it’s more about what is the necessary existence. Is it the universe? Is it external to the universe? Is it a multiverse generator? Is it God? They tend to move from necessary existence to further points about what other types of attributes may follow from type of existence.
I dont understand why we’re talking about James Bond here? The arguments for a necessary existence follow a chain of reasons that begin with sense experience of things that originate and perish (dependent or contingent existences) and then asks is that all there is? It then runs through the possibilities of that being all there is facing problems along the way until forced to conceding a necessary existence of some kind has to exist (whether the universe itself or external creator etc). I dont see how 007 plays into this discussion?
Again not really sure where this is going? We can do this with any discussion. We could talk about the differences between monkeys, rats, cats and dogs and just hand wave the discussion away and say “lets just use the word everything”. Isn’t really helpful, and doesn’t really do anything to address the real differences between the things being discussed.
I think you’re over complicating it unnecessarily. I don’t need to know how the hadron collider was created, or understand what process they went through to make it, to understand that there was some type of creation through will involved there.
Again, it’s something simple. The ability to make choices. To pick one thing in favour of another. To choose that you exist instead of not existing.
No this is deduced from discussions about necessity and/or independence. If everything dependent has any amount of power, and it is all dependent on the independent entity, then it must be the source of all power, and have at-least as much power as it has given and potentially have access to more, or still maintains full control over said power.
The sun has power/force as well. It’s not just tied to will in and of itself. More vaguely speaking could just be “the ability to do work or transfer energy”.
No worries. I appreciate your input. But I do feel like you complicate things for yourself a little unnecessarily (pun not intended).
Given in a quote above.
“exists” means really there in reality, not just in thought or imagination, and possessing being in some objective way.
Completely disagree. And dont find this helpful to the discussion.
Yet here you are voluntarily engaging in the discussion. The proper analogy would be you walking into a building, restraining yourself and refusing to leave the room, while accusing people of holding you hostage for something you put yourself in. Dont like the conversation, it’s easy enough to not engage with it lol.
Ironically your type of engagement has more of the odour of narcissism to it than anything else I’ve seen in this thread.
I address this in the OP
You’re not tracking the discussion. It hasn’t gotten to the stage of who is right or who is wrong. It’s about classification of the possible positions someone can hold and the semantics surrounding said discussions. This is like level 1 of the discussion. Debate about the soundness of the positions and the validity of the arguments and truthfulness of the premises comes at level 2 after establishing the foundation of the discussion first. In setting this stage up you’re not required to say anyone has proved anything yet.
Ok need to pause again and crack on with life. Will try catch up again another day.
Because you’ve been unclear and unhelpful. It’s starting to seem like you haven’t studied it at all at this point because asking for clarification in philosophy is very common. It’s an attempt to understand what your interlocutor is actually saying so you avoid dealing with a strawman. Silly obtuse responses like this dont get the conversation anywhere. Engage with me honestly and sincerely, or move on.
How does Anti-theism differ from just atheism or agnosticism?
Good to hear.
For the most part I’m enjoying reading a lot of the responses. Not enjoying some. Such is life.
Apologies if I misread you. It’s perfectly alright to kickstart a discussion on a topic of interest. I like my first post to your thread. 
This will simply be a rerun of what you already should know. Antitheism holds God to be celestial dictator.
Your post is at least a week old. China built a makeshift hospital for thousands in that time. During the Corona virus pandemic. Sic vita est, indeed.
So the position believes God exists but you should rebel against him?
No problem.
Gg china.
banal reductio ad psychologicum reaction that doesn’t relate to any axes of the logical space of the question but allow people who don’t access this space to react.
I prefer the reductio ad hitlerum, much more tasty, but OK, I’ll drink this little white beer.
It’s funny how when your own attitude is mirrored back at you, you suddenly see it for what it is 
but seem incapable of noticing when you do it yourself.
Also you didn’t present an argument. You just made a bunch of claims.
This isn’t analogous at all. At no point have I done anything similar to what you’ve just framed here and you’re completely derailing the OP. If you weren’t such a bad faith actor, I’d engage with you. If you don’t want to engage without all the psycho-analysing, strawman’s, and other boring nonsenes, then I’ll just invest my efforts in others who are making an effort to stay on topic and be more civil in their engagement.
I’ve not claimed they have anywhere in this thread. This is a discussion on semantics and categorisation. So not sure what this is responding to with regards to anything I’ve said.
EDIT: Ok i think i’m following what you’re getting at.
So my discussion is about definitions. In response to that you said that i didn’t mention that the atheist hasn’t proved that God doesn’t exist. The reason that isn’t following from the discussion in the OP is because that isn’t the purpose of the discussion. You’re essentially saying the Atheist is incorrectly holding their belief (which is fine for you to say) but that is going beyond the discussion of definitions and categorisation and into which position is valid or invalid, sound or unsound etc. So your initial point is to say who is right or wrong. That’s what it has to do with it. Your first comment on here was to say the hard atheist is incorrect. Or was I mistaken?
I’ll start with this. First, I get this a lot. Second, stuff looks simple when you can square said stuff with your intuitions. Not so much when you can’t. This goes right into the meaning of words. I do, for example, have an accumulated intuition about the word “God” - it’s not meaningless in the way a random string of letters would be (“gjrkel”, say, is meaningless in a different way).
To get at “God” I need to first strip down my worldview and suspend stuff. But if I suspend too much, making sense of anything gets hard. It’s a tricky balance, and that’s why it’s complicated.
For me, it’s quite simple actually: if I ingore the concept of “God” and don’t try to understand it, things fall into place (not only God, so it’s not that simple, but anyway…)
Now in sequence:
Here, phrasing the question like this, you assume there is something “God” and it has attributes. But I don’t assume there is a God, so all I have is God’s assumed attributes. Being “old”, being a “man”, and being “in the sky” would be examples of attributes that are fairly easy to understand. Being “omniscient”, being “omnipotent” etc. aren’t quite like that. For example, “omniscient” seems just an extension of knowing some things but not others to a purported “everthing”.
This is why I didn’t say God had to be an old man in the sky to have attributes. I said, if that’s the sort of attributes He had, He’d be easier to understand, though probably also harder to believe in.
Are asking specifically about God here? Because I start having rouble with the applicability of logic to real world. The logic of necessary vs. contingent in possible-world theory is easy enough to understand. The good old example of “2 + 2 = 4” being necessary and so on. It’s what I’m supposed to do with this when it comes to the world I know that’s nebulous.
When it comes to God in particular, this reminds me of the ontological argument. I’ve heard an explanation once that was more promising than the ones I usually hear, though I didn’t quite understand that and so forgot what it was.
Some atheists can. I can’t. I’m unfamiliar with Graham Oppy. I don’t speak for anyone but myself. And:
And I won’t create a controvery either; I just walk away and leave these discussions to those that care. And I assume they’d not profit from an ignoramus like me in them anyway. I’m by training a sociologist, though not by profession, and I’m certainly no philosopher. I don’t believe in God, and that’s really all there is to it.
Because when we say “exist” about James Bond we can either say: he doesn’t exist, or we can say he “exists” with the attribute fictional, and then you have something to explore, namely the attribute “fictional”.
God would be a lot easier to understand if He had the attribute “fictional”. Because being “fictional” is something within the boundry of our experience. Being God just isn’t. Or maybe it is part of yours? God is something I can’t perceive independently of the assigned attributes, has some extraordinary attributes that seem hard to grasp (as being the “creator of the universe”, omni-X, and so on), and above all is a singular existance so comparisons also seem futile.
Thus:
All those things are right there to look at, right? I’ll likely never see someone build a hadron collider, but I could have had a go at it myself had I had the inclination.
Similarly, I’m not quite sure, for example, about all the differences between a rat and a mouse; so I could be difficult about it if I wanted to. If I were to question the differences, that would be about their classification, though - not that there is something they call a rat, and something they call a mouse. I’d say this is a rat-mouse-thingy and that is a rat-mouse thingy, but we’d point at the same critters.
Impossible with God.
Simple.
Simple.
What?
See, choosing stuff is something we do, so it’s quite intuitive a process for us. But there have to be choices, no? We can’t decide things beyond our means. I mean I don’t have brother, and none of unlimited amount of brothers I don’t have can, I assume, decide to exist. God can? You think that’s… simple?
And that’s the sort of “power” you mean when you talk about God? Can you build a God-o-meter that tells me how much energy he’s currently transferring?
There’s a clear disconnect between us, no? You say it’s simple, but you don’t make it sound simple to me.
It’s not “God exists,” vs. “God doesn’t exist,” - for me. It’s walking away from a pointless argument. (Given that I live with people who believe in God, I can’t afford to be fully disinterested, but it’s not like there’s a God-shaped hole in my worldview, at least not that I can currently see.)
I don’t have an issue with the concept, but it strikes me as decidedly atheist. It rejects the concept of transcendental personality and instead replaces “worship” targets with reality. I think, in most cases I’ve heard of, that this is what the atheist wants to do. Even people who are incredibly atheist (say Sam Harris) acknowledges the numinous in humans and understands this is important and should be cultivated in some way. But it doesn’t contradict a pure atheist worldview, I don’t think - even one that says “there is no God” which is not quite what atheist says, prima facie.
So, what I’m saying is you’re right - but I think making a mistake in intimating that this isn’t atheism, or that atheism somehow counts out this type of naturalistic spirituality.
But this harks back to the discussion Banno tries to have. The words should probably be employed with “best use” in mind, rather than ones that overlap to the degree that we need threads like this.
You aren’t tracking the conversation. You as a hard agnostic believe it’s not possible to have knowledge, and so the “hopeful agnostic” definition for theists & atheists follows from your conclusions, it doesn’t act as a justification for the definitions until your position is proven, which involves showing how the theist and the atheist fail in their argumentation for their position.
You are completely jumping the gun here, missing the fact that this is the definitional stage where the positions are outlined, and just jumping straight to your position being true without offering argumentation or justification. Your position may even be the true one, but before you can get there you need to outline what the competing positions are so you can explore them sufficiently and give reasons/counter-reasons
What you’re doing could be done by the atheist and theist as well.
From the Atheists and Theists perspective, their counterparts are delusional and the agnostics just don’t know enough about the subject and project that lack of knowledge outwardly on to those who believe they are justified.
All you’re doing here is saying your position is the right one. Which again, is completely ignoring the aim of the OP and just asserting conclusions with a “trust me bro” attitude. It’s not helpful.