Atheist or Agnostic?

[Whateverist]

I admire the clarity and scope of your reply. As a matter of fact, I do rely on grace quite a bit. Not the grace of a god, so far as I know, but of what I would call the totality of myself. It seems the conscious mind is but one player in the phenomenon of consciousness. Quite a powerful player for sure, but that power can be withheld. No one is insightful or creative on the basis of his own deliberative designs alone. In anything remarkable or truly worthwhile there is often a spark of something more, and that spark is a gift which the conscious mind alone does not control.

I believe in plenty of wild things for which I cannot provide evidence. I just don't call any of them gods. So long as gods were understood as phenomenon of the mind, something on board with every human being, I would not have any problem acknowledging them. But always we are told that they are external to ourselves, eternal and the creator of all. By mixing claims regarding our internal workings with claims regarding the cosmos, religion becomes incoherent to me.

Nonetheless, I don't find anyone automatically lacking on account of their god belief. If they demonstrate insight and good intentions I'm impressed regardless of the self labeling. My agnosticism is primary for me, my atheism is primarily a reaction to finding the concept of god as most often espoused incoherent.