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Christians are medieval thinking figures with at most two or three brain cells. This is their religion:
God gave the Bible
The Bible is true because God gave it
God exists, it is written in the Bible
A circular argument, because the Bible refers to God, God to the Bible. While it follows the rules of logic, it is correct only because of the unstated assumption that 1) God exists and 2) the Bible is His written words. And since these refer to each other, you keep going around in a circle and thus you are always right. Handy! The time-honored 'it is so because it is so'. So this can rightly be called "faith," just as you can believe in the "flying spaghetti monster," gnomes and St. Nicholas.
This is how I've heard atheists talk lately. When I pointed out that I am also a Christian with presumably therefore two or three brain cells, I was attributed extenuating circumstances: probably I did have more than three brain cells, but I just wasn't using them.
What genuinely amazes me is that one's own circular reasoning is not recognized and there seem to be few atheists who see through the consequences of one's own thinking. For example, people first paint a picture of a God that no Christian believes in, only to say how ridiculous it is to believe in that. Huge oversimplifications of views and arguments are also made, so that it almost seems as if they themselves do not understand how logic and argumentation works. I can do it too:
god does not exist
either god is from peanut butter
We know peanut butter is not divine
So god does not exist.
True, but it is a god that (as far as I know) no one believes in. Atheists particularly often manage to 'unmask' gods that neither man nor god believes in. Also, I often discern confusion about God as a 'genesis' with how this God is further known; what his characteristics are and whether he is personal or unknowable. An example of the former is the ever-recurring 'flying spaghetti monster,' while this is a 'god' which is personal or unknowable. within time and space and therefore cannot be its raison d'être. The second concerns the specific characteristics of God which are obviously important for the believer, and for his subsequent reasoning, but not at all for the existence Of (a) God. Even if God seems to you "not a nice guy" that says nothing about his existence.
Incidentally, even a prominent Atheist like Dawkins in debate with Lennox to that he can go a long way toward Einstein's god (Deism - an impersonal God). So it is indeed the Christian God that is being opposed.
Coincidentally, while writing this article today, I stumbled upon an opinion piece by Bart Klink: 'Will the real God please stand up'. Again, the same confusion; all the examples and objections mentioned are about images of God. Not about his existence. Shouldn't you have a definition first then? But; that is precisely the most common objection made; that we already know in advance what we want to argue. Let us first argue whether existence has a ground. And what that might entail. From there you can reason further to "whose God is the best. Incidentally, it is quite possible to distill a unified view of God among Christians, as C.S. Lewis, among others, has argued in Unadulterated Christianity.
In addition, it seems to me that what is particularly in the limelight here is the confirmation that there are indeed many ideas about God, thus confirming that a wrong worldview is often attacked. After all, you first have to know what someone's worldview is before you can attack it? Let's turn it around: I hereby declare that there are many atheists with different ideas about which god they do not believe in: some believe in only matter, others believe in "spirit" but not in a creator, some say they cannot know anything, others are just sure that god does not exist. Because atheists have no unambiguous worldview have denying God is not tenable, therefore God exists. Is this tenable? Doesn't seem to me; on the contrary, it reinforces the fact that better inquiries should be made about the specific God belief rather than preparing a straw man.
We must therefore talk about (god) arguments, such as within Christianity about morality, the cosmological argument or the modal-epistemic argument. Or about the consequences of atheism; such as the problem of rationality, reasonableness and logic in senseless and random processes of creation (the gap between evolution and naturalism) or the is/are problem as postulated by David Hume regarding morality.
Let's try to listen to each other and see if a substantive conversation can take place, rather than both inventing the worldview for the other person and (then) flaunting it.
Some comments regarding atheist/atheism:
An atheist, who denies the existence of God, is like a bird denying that there is a sky or a fish, that there is an ocean; "in Him we live, we move and we are.
When he does his speech in Papua New Guinea or the interior of South America, he will most likely end up in the boiling pot.
Why deny something if it is not there? When I would walk in a park every day and a magnificent tree is no longer there one day I would miss it. But if this tree never stood there, why should I deny that it exists!
The atheist, in his denial of God, thereby affirms the very existence of God.
He will feel at home with people who claim that the earth is flat; that 1 + 1 = 3; that there were no concentration camps during WW2.
Some comments regarding atheist/atheism:
An atheist, who denies the existence of God, is like a bird denying that there is a sky or a fish, that there is an ocean; "in Him we live, we move and we are.
When he does his speech in Papua New Guinea or the interior of South America, he will most likely end up in the boiling pot.
Why deny something if it is not there? When I would walk in a park every day and a magnificent tree is no longer there one day I would miss it. But if this tree never stood there, why should I deny that it exists!
The atheist, in his denial of God, thereby affirms the very existence of God.
He will feel at home with people who claim that the earth is flat; that 1 + 1 = 3; that there were no concentration camps during WW2.
Indeed, with the militant kind of atheism of the "new atheists," there does seem to be a conversion drive. Why? They believe because faith causes more harm than good. I don't want to dismiss that too quickly, but enter into the conversation about it. Are there good reasons for atheism? I have come across few, most arguments are against the existence of God (not the plausibility of a world without God). But disproving arguments for God does make atheism more plausible. Personally, I believe there is then much more to be said for Deism or perhaps agnosticism. But often there is also an emotional component that touches on the evil in the world and the problem of evil and a good God. This is still one of the best arguments against God, but atheism does not solve this. Nice if you can get into a conversation about that.
Good arguments for engaging in conversation. Something to think about. I am reminded of a friend who asked me if I could imagine her not believing in God. I said that I could imagine it because I know moments myself when I am not engaged in faith at all. What you are not involved with seems ´away´ so to speak but yes, that is not the same as exploring existence. Now it was not the setting for that. We were lying by a pond and went swimming. We had deeper conversations about it later. Not that it helped...