Most atheists hold their view based on emotional, not rational grounds
Most commonly, when I debate an atheist, and he challenges me, and claims that there is no evidence for God, and I provide irrefutable, compelling evidence, his reaction is not gratitude, because his demand has been met. He responds with anger and rejection. He does ask for evidence because he hopes to find something else that he is looking for. He is not looking for evidence for God, but he hopes for a confirmation that your view is unwarranted, unsupported, insufficient and irrational, and worth being rejected. He wants you to fail, so he can keep his confidence that no God exists, which is what he desires. It's called confirmation bias.
This is confirmed by the fact, that most, if not all if asked if they would worship the God of the Bible if he was proven to exist, they answer with a resounding no. The reasons are almost all the same.
God is a moral monster, he condones genocide, and slavery, he drowned babies, the problem of evil, and animal suffering. They claim that God is not benevolent and that he could have created a better world without suffering, or having spared any kind of suffering altogether. He could have created us like angels, rather than letting us go through this fallen world.
I think there is not much more than prayer that we can do, so people can recognize that God's goodness and righteousness demand punishment for sins, otherwise, he would be unjust, and he would have created an unjust world.
Yesterday I was on an atheist channel, where they were discussing how to overcome the fear of hell. They prefer to live in uncertainty if they will be punished by God, rather than surrender to a loving, righteous creator. There is only one way to get peace of mind and heart. Surrender to Jesus, and receive his grace and forgiveness. But that comes when we recognize who he really is. When we do so, we start feeling attracted.
You cannot love what you do not know. So we need to know God up to the limit that he permits us. in order to recognize his love, kindness, goodness, and righteousness. A right understanding of who he is, brings us closer to him. A false, superficial understanding, can be self-delusional and lead us away and astray.
Donald McLaughlin: Most of them really don't base their unbelief on evidential grounds (or lack thereof as they see it), but simply because they don't want there to be a God, let alone one who might actually desire to be relationship with them. They recognize the implications of that all too well and run from it as fast as they can, tossing truth, facts, reality, logic, reason, and evidence out the window if they have must. Rarely, if ever, will they admit error in their own logic and reason on anything, let alone admit that the theist has made a good point or argument. Such intellectual dishonesty is a sure sign, to me anyways, that the issues lie within the heart, not the head. My tactic lately is to turn the tables on their demand for evidence. I start by asking them what they even mean by the term "evidence", or what it means to say 'X' is "evidence" for 'Y'. That usually stumps them because most have never given much thought to the nature of evidence and what it means in a scientific context. If we get past that, I might ask what they would take to be evidence for God. Most won't even bother to answer that question and bob and weave around it. Its up to me, I'm told, to provide the evidence, not for them to explain what evidence they may or may not accept. It is usually some version of the claim "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". My response to that is, "good'". The extraordinary evidence for God is A)the absolute beginning to the universe; B)the exquisite fine tuning of the physical laws that govern the operation of the universe; and C) the ubiquitous examples of complex, specified information we observe throughout biological systems. Then I'll say that it is up to them to explain how the blind, purposeless forces of matter and energy (not to mention absolutely nothing) interacting over eons of time through chance and/or necessity can account for all three of those things. The case for theism is solid. The case for atheism is virtually non-existent.
Most commonly, when I debate an atheist, and he challenges me, and claims that there is no evidence for God, and I provide irrefutable, compelling evidence, his reaction is not gratitude, because his demand has been met. He responds with anger and rejection. He does ask for evidence because he hopes to find something else that he is looking for. He is not looking for evidence for God, but he hopes for a confirmation that your view is unwarranted, unsupported, insufficient and irrational, and worth being rejected. He wants you to fail, so he can keep his confidence that no God exists, which is what he desires. It's called confirmation bias.
This is confirmed by the fact, that most, if not all if asked if they would worship the God of the Bible if he was proven to exist, they answer with a resounding no. The reasons are almost all the same.
God is a moral monster, he condones genocide, and slavery, he drowned babies, the problem of evil, and animal suffering. They claim that God is not benevolent and that he could have created a better world without suffering, or having spared any kind of suffering altogether. He could have created us like angels, rather than letting us go through this fallen world.
I think there is not much more than prayer that we can do, so people can recognize that God's goodness and righteousness demand punishment for sins, otherwise, he would be unjust, and he would have created an unjust world.
Yesterday I was on an atheist channel, where they were discussing how to overcome the fear of hell. They prefer to live in uncertainty if they will be punished by God, rather than surrender to a loving, righteous creator. There is only one way to get peace of mind and heart. Surrender to Jesus, and receive his grace and forgiveness. But that comes when we recognize who he really is. When we do so, we start feeling attracted.
You cannot love what you do not know. So we need to know God up to the limit that he permits us. in order to recognize his love, kindness, goodness, and righteousness. A right understanding of who he is, brings us closer to him. A false, superficial understanding, can be self-delusional and lead us away and astray.
Donald McLaughlin: Most of them really don't base their unbelief on evidential grounds (or lack thereof as they see it), but simply because they don't want there to be a God, let alone one who might actually desire to be relationship with them. They recognize the implications of that all too well and run from it as fast as they can, tossing truth, facts, reality, logic, reason, and evidence out the window if they have must. Rarely, if ever, will they admit error in their own logic and reason on anything, let alone admit that the theist has made a good point or argument. Such intellectual dishonesty is a sure sign, to me anyways, that the issues lie within the heart, not the head. My tactic lately is to turn the tables on their demand for evidence. I start by asking them what they even mean by the term "evidence", or what it means to say 'X' is "evidence" for 'Y'. That usually stumps them because most have never given much thought to the nature of evidence and what it means in a scientific context. If we get past that, I might ask what they would take to be evidence for God. Most won't even bother to answer that question and bob and weave around it. Its up to me, I'm told, to provide the evidence, not for them to explain what evidence they may or may not accept. It is usually some version of the claim "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". My response to that is, "good'". The extraordinary evidence for God is A)the absolute beginning to the universe; B)the exquisite fine tuning of the physical laws that govern the operation of the universe; and C) the ubiquitous examples of complex, specified information we observe throughout biological systems. Then I'll say that it is up to them to explain how the blind, purposeless forces of matter and energy (not to mention absolutely nothing) interacting over eons of time through chance and/or necessity can account for all three of those things. The case for theism is solid. The case for atheism is virtually non-existent.
