You are not as clever as you like to think you are.
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I’m just repeating myself here. This isn’t just about me or you and what we think about the opposing positions. It’s about the whole field of discussion that revolves around this, and classifying the positions people have, what they believe to be true, and how they describe their position. Not how it’s described by their adversary.
It’s obvious I’m not both an atheist and a theist simultaneously, i can agree with one or neither of them, and still represent their position definitionally, AND THEN engage with its soundness.
Just constantly reasserting that you’re an agnostic and anyone who disagrees with you is just a “hopeful agnostic” is just putting the cart before the horse. Theists and atheists all have differing reasons about why they are theists or atheists. They may or may not be justified in that position. You currently being agnostic is not a proof that they are too. That’s just absurd.
I suppose how we come to our own understanding of spirituality depends largely on our own personal experiences.
I do not consider myself an atheist. I believe in the divine. I find it difficult to accept the dogma of organized religion, but I am in perpetual awe and wonder at creation. It suits my particular perspective to consider that everything that exists everywhere is indeed sacred.
I have found a good home for my spirituality in the Catholic Church. When I say the Lord’s prayer, it aligns quite well with pantheistic beliefs.
And the Hail Mary recognizes the divine feminine -
Holy Mary, Mother of God…
What’s the point of this? You’re clearly not reading my posts or engaging with what I’m saying.
Watch I can do the same… “The theist and atheist are not hopeful, you’re just hopeless”
See. Doesn’t go anwhere. Doesn’t engage with a single thing I’ve said. And completely ignores the point of the OP.
Fair enough - nothing wrong with that, but I think if you truly believe in “the divine” then yes, you cannot be an atheist. I just don’t think that’s at all what scientific pantheism is about.
Suffice to say Catholicism is cartoonish to me 
I very much hope it brings you comfort though.
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The definition of a hard agnostic is someone hopeless about everyones ability to know something with certainty, and despite not having engaged with everyone’s different arguments, just holds the unjustified assumption that it can’t be possible apriori before making the effort to engage and prove that all the positions in favour of atheism and theism are unjustified. Instead he just asserts everyone is just a hopeful agnostic without proof, and just says “trust me bro - no one knows.”
See how that works?
You have no clue whether or not every single person on the planet is justified or not because you haven’t engaged with all of them. You want to call everyone a “hopeful agnostic”? I’ll hit back and say you’re a “hopeless soft agnostic” (check definitions ij the OP).
The reality is you can only say YOU dont know, and maybe (at most) the handful of people you’ve engaged with that have failed to prove God does or doesn’t exist to you. But you are certainly not justified in any way to then globalise your own inability. You have not proved that no one can know. You haven’t proved your perception of theists and atheists to be true. You’re just asserting it without proof. That’s dogmatism.
Do you know such a person doesn’t exist? Have you engaged with every variation of atheist and theist? Have you spoke to every single person who claims to know and analysed their reasons?
You’re not engaging at all.
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That is literally not engaging at all. “You’re just hopeless. You’ve only ever been hopeless.”
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If we consider atheism as a second order term (in contrast to first order theism), then it makes more sense to say atheism means ‘not theism’ or ‘without theism’. Thus, an atheist is one who rejects theism because theism – consisting of ‘claims’ about the empty name “God” (i.e. it lacks a non-subjective referent) – is not true with respect to reality. IMO, atheism addresses the truth-value of theism, not the ontological status of “God”.
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I guess you “hope” you’re making sense.
Explain what you mean by “exists” and why that is relevant to defining theism / atheism.
So you’re incapable of directly answering the straight-forward question I asked about your usage of “exists”. Okay, Jasper. Keep on hoping …
Your definition seems inadequate. I’ve met many atheists who really wish and hope there is a God but just can’t manage to believe it. Conversely I’ve known quite a few theists who wish there wasn’t a God, but can’t help believing. It may be out of our control, we are primed by our dispositions, culture and upbringing. I’ve often said that theism is a bit like sexual preference: you can’t help what you’re attracted to.
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The logic in this thread seems to be that one can dispose of such issues by choosing some suitable definition. That isn’t going to work.
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Strawman. No one is debating on this thread about “God” or “Self”.
You seem to think that replacing “believes” with “hopes” helps.
Not seeing it.
The notion of an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent being appears to be incompatible with the way the world is.
So one might well conclude that the theistic god is inconsistent with the world.
That’s only one reason amongst many to believe that God, as mooted, is incoherent and so does not exist.
If the notion of god is incoherent, or inconsistent, then there is good reason to believe that the being so described does not exist.
There is an inconstancy in a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient being in a world in which bad things happen.
Bad things happen.
There are various ad hoc and post hoc arguments agains this. Those who are not convinced by these have good reason to think god does not exist.
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Yes it really is helpful to at least try to define what it is that one is claiming to “believe” or “not believe in” i.e. which conception of the divine, the holy, the numinous, the sacred. There are so many different conceptions of “god” mystical, eastern, western, philosophical, etc. that merely defining atheism as lack of belief in “god” or “God” is a rather meaningless proposition or proposal. Everyone talking past each other or at the very least not really talking about the same conception.
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