My dog is now only sort of a canine. Might even be a cat! Because I can define it any way I want to.
Yes, you can. You aware no doubt aware that definitions don't change reality, just what we call its objects, processes, and traits. Those choices will create problems for you conceptually and in communication, so they are poor ones, but you're free to go ahead and make those changes if you think it will clarify reality for you. Likewise, you calling agnostic atheists agnostics but not atheists doesn't change who those people are or what they believe, just what YOU call them, and is not relevant to them except when trying to understand what YOU mean when you use those words.
Apparently, for YOU, atheist means a person who says that there is no god, and an agnostic is somebody who expresses psychological (emotional, or felt) rather than mere philosophical doubt (intellectual, or understood). OK. I have no objection to your use of language that way except that your words don't map onto reality and your nomenclature isn't useful to me, as I explained, and I can generally understand what you are trying to say even if I disagree. But I can't use a definition of atheist that doesn't include what I call agnostic atheists like me, which apparently is most of us.
Finding meaning and purpose does indeed answer why we are here. It might not answer the " how" but that's not what we need as much as the " why,". Someone put us here to do good.
Not for an atheist. I have found meaning and purpose in my life, but that doesn't answer why any of us are here.
Also, out of respect for your desire to know the why of reality all the way back, you now have a whole raft of new unanswered questions, such as why someone put us here to do good and why somebody exists that can do that. You seem unaware that the weapon you wish to scuttle naturalistic hypotheses with
The Principle of Sufficient Reason stipulates that everything must have "a reason, cause, or ground." It might be correct, but even if it is, it doesn't promise that that reason or the one preceding it or the one preceding that can be determined, and ultimately, we must abandon the hope of finding a first cause in that infinite regress. And as I explained, this OK because it has to be and because it always has been the case and caused no problems.
Without this, life is ultimately purposeless no matter how you try to claim otherwise.
Purposeless to whom? Not to me. My life is purposeless to inanimate matter, but that doesn't matter to me. Your theology has deprived you of what the humanist sees. I suppose you can't know what he thinks if you can't imagine it and won't listen to him, but you keep guessing, and guessing wrong. Why? You take your mind instead of his and subtract God from it, and imagine how that would look to you - hopeless, purposeless, not worth living. It reminds me of the line from Seinfeld:
ELAINE: If you were a woman would you go out with him?
JERRY: If I was a woman I'd be down at the dock waiting for the fleet to come in.
That's an example of a guy who took his mans mind and imagined how he would react in a woman's body if he woke up in one some day. Of course, he's overlooking the fact that almost no woman want to do that, so he's wrong. He didn't grow up as a woman, and so doesn't think like one. The same applies here with you. You make the same kind of substitution, and also fail to notice that the people you're talking about don't fit your guesses for them.
Some arbitrary claim like " I make my own purpose" is nonsense if all you do is live for a bit and go to the dirt.
Not nonsense. But then, how would you know? You deprived yourself of the opportunity to mature in atheism.
Here's what the atheist has:
"Sophisticated purpose-driven human behaviors are, fundamentally, merely elaborations of the evolved drive to survive and reproduce as vehicles for self-propagating genes. "
"Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless..."
And that would likely lead to an existential crisis for you were you to suddenly lose your god belief, which is why I told you earlier that I am not interested in converting older theists to humanism. I made the change at 35 when my neuroplasticity was up to the challenge of redrawing my mental map, and when I still had most of my generative years still ahead, years in which I would be making life decisions that could impact my future greatly. I had much to gain and the cost, an uncomfortable year of being half in and half out praying to Jesus that if I were making a mistake to let me know, was absorbable. But to do that now? Assuming that it was still possible, why bother?
But I did make the transition and have had plenty of time to mature in humanism, and I can assure you that the experience in nothing like what you describe or imagine.
I'd like to introduce the term optimistic nihilism here. You've seen it in me before when I expressed acceptance of the facts that reality might be fundamentally and radically different than it appears, and that we not have free will. OK. If that's how things are, I'm good with it, just as if there is no purpose to life outside of that which we give it, OK. That's fine, too.
"
Optimistic nihilism views the belief that there is no underlying meaning to life from a perspective of hope. It’s not that we’re doomed to live in a meaningless universe–it’s that we get the chance to experience ourselves and the universe we share. The optimistic nihilist looks at a world lacking meaning and purpose and sees the opportunity to create their own."
You assume that somebody thinking that there's no point to life will be unhappy. All you need do is look around you and count the numbers of people that are content with the possibility that they live in a godless universe that can blindly generate life and mind. Yes, I understand that that may not be the case, but that's not the point. The point is that one can be happy without beliefs like yours.
What they believe is not relevant to the definition of the word.
Except that you reject people like me calling themselves atheists because they don't also believe that gods cannot exist. Your definition is based in what people calling themselves atheists believe about gods
Not maybe, kinda, sorta think there might be a god, but don't believe in gods at all.
You don't seem to be able to grasp that the ideas are not mutually exclusive. I suspect also that you don't understand the difference between philosophical and psychological doubt because you are only familiar with the latter, so you think agnostic atheists are still travailing over whether gods exist.
Have you seen Dawkins' scale of theistic probability from his book The God Delusion, or how sure one is in his or her god belief or disbelief? He names 7 levels, the last two being
6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
7. Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one."
"Dawkins argues that while there appear to be plenty of individuals that would place themselves as "1" due to the strictness of religious doctrine against doubt, most atheists do not consider themselves "7" because atheism arises from a lack of evidence and evidence can always change a thinking person's mind. In print, Dawkins self-identified as a "6", though when interviewed [later] suggested "6.9" to be more accurate."
This is philosophical doubt - understood, not felt - but would have you say that Dawkins is not an atheist, as if he were sitting on a fence on the matter. The issue is settled for him like it is for me and most other agnostic atheists. We're not seeking gods because we don't expect to find any, not because we know they don't exist. And your nomenclature doesn't work for us, so we don't use it, or care when others insist we must because they found it in a dictionary.
