For some odd reason, I love the idea that there are religious believers out there who try to convert atheists back to religion. I can’t imagine a more pointless exercise. They really think there must be some magical argument to ‘win us’ back to the fold. They can’t understand our decision not to believe in God is the result of years of slow and gradual change, ultimately leading to the conclusion that the provincialism of supernatural entities is a guarantee of their falsehood.

The most hopeless of these bunch of jokers has to be the Answers in Genesis folks. As the name implies, these deluded morons think everything in the Bible must be believed, despite the gargantuan effort it takes to reconcile reality with fantasy (they usually just end up ignoring most of the former). If you really want to know just how profoundly ignorant they are about non belief, take a gander at this open letter to atheists they recently wrote:

Are you tired of all the evil associated with the philosophy of atheism—Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and so on? After all, most murderers, tyrants, and rapists are not biblical Christians, and most have rejected the God of the Bible. Even if they claim to believe in the God of the Bible, they are not really living like a true Christ follower (who strives to follow God’s Word), are they?

Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy  Never gets old, right? If someone does something you don’t agree with, it’s easy just to claim they aren’t true believers. I could try this same tactic to try and ‘defend’ atheism, but there’s really no point. People do all sorts of nasty things to one another, even when they don’t have the extra justification of thinking their actions are sanctioned by their private gods. As Stalin and Mao have shown, one does not need religion to start a cult: you just need the same uncritical thinking religious people are so fond of.

In fact, why would an atheist care to live one moment longer in a broken universe where one is merely rearranged pond scum and all you have to look forward to is . . . death, which can be around any corner? And in 467 trillion years, no one will care one iota about what you did or who you were or how and when you died—because death is the ultimate “hero” in an atheistic, evolutionary worldview. Of course, as a Christian I disagree, and I have a basis to see you as having value.

Lovely. The “atheists don’t believe in the afterlife and therefore don’t take it as seriously as we do” nonsense. It’s actually shocking how much they don’t understand what not believing in Disneyland in the clouds is really all about. While many former believers do express the initial grief and sorrow they feel from losing a love one, no one can claim atheists don’t have a full appreciation for this life. Unlike Christians, who think this life is merely a pit-stop in an otherwise lengthy vacation to magical Wally World in the sky where all your deceased loved ones are breathlessly anticipating your return. Why should one even bother with the hardships of this world if the next one, supposedly lasting an eternity, is so wonderful?

For professing atheists, these questions can be overwhelming to make sense of within their worldview. And further, within an atheistic worldview, atheists must view themselves as God. Essentially, atheists are claiming to be God. Instead of saying there may not be a God, they say there is no God. To make such a statement, they must claim to be omniscient

While there might be a few nonbelievers who make the positive claim that there can be no God, most of us instead chose to merely reject a claim made with no evidence whatsoever. In a sense, all religious people use this same method to reject the gods of other religions. No one would accuse them of omniscience for refusing to believe in Thor, Zeus, or Mithras. Atheism is merely the lack of belief in these and all other forms of religious superstition. It does not take omniscience to reject a bad premise.

Are you weary of looking for evidence that contradicts the Bible’s account of creation and finding none? Do the assumptions and inconsistencies of dating methods weigh on your conscience when they are misrepresented as fact? Where do you suppose those missing links have gone into hiding? Surely the atheist sees the folly and hopelessness of believing that everything came from nothing.

Yeah, it’s so hard to find examples of contradictions in the Bible…It must be easy not to see them when you’ve chosen to ignore the real world, right?

Where atheists have no basis for logic and reason (or even for truth, since truth is immaterial), Bible believers can understand that mankind is made in the image of a logical and reasoning God who is the truth…Christians also have a basis to explain why people sometimes don’t think logically due to the Fall of mankind in Genesis

I guess the reason we can’t think logically is because Eve ate a magical fruit and the first humans were cast out of Adventureland, only to have a bunch of inbred, fratricidal children. See, it has nothing to do with our evolved mammalian brain! God is a gigantic, omniscient Ape who made you in his image, and in return, you need to give him all your money. Wow, sure sounds like I should eliminate the foundation of my beliefs and just go for the nonsense. I couldn’t possibly believe in anything logical if I didn’t!