Atheistic Problems

I don’t get atheists who are aggressively hostile against Christianity. For several reasons (starting with the simplest working to the most complex):

1. If there is no such thing as God, why would it matter if other people believed in one? If there is no ultimate reality after death, why should we care what other people believe, so what’s the point in arguing about it (from an Atheist standpoint).

2. They are more hostile to Christianity than any other religion. Atheists are abusive to Christian far and beyond what they are to other religions. If there is no God or after life (a variation of one or both is taught by all major religions) then why not be hostile toward all? And if it is the “irrational” nature of the belief in miracles like the crossing of the Sea, the turning of water into wine, and the resurrection, then look at various other religions with much more wild claims like ancestor worship, people becoming gods to rule their own planets, reincarnation where a person may become a cat, etc.

3. If there is no God, and thus no standard for absolute truth, (I know this point can be debated but I’ve never heard an Atheist do much better than a final authority of “social convention”), then why can’t a Christian be just as justified in their beliefs? And what is the point of debating? Why be so hostile? If there is no absolute truth, then how does an atheist know that there is absolutely no God? How do they know that the Bible is absolutely errant?

4. If there is no God, then the Atheist has the transcendental problem of reason and logic. Atheists like to tout reason as the final authority but they do not realize that it is functioning for them as an a priori assumption, which they claim we cannot have (We cannot assume God as an a priori reality). The question is, if there is no God, what are laws of logic and where did they come from? How are laws of logic immaterial, immutable, and eternal in a material, mutable, finite universe? The answer commonly given is “Social convention” to which the problem becomes: why then should we follow laws of logic? Why not have one culture that can say that “my car is in the garage and it is not the case that my car is the garage”? And if they are not social conventions, then what is their basis? You see, for an Atheist to say that the only absolute authority is reason, then they are using a statement that functions as a pre-commitment. In a Christian’s world view laws of logic exist and we can be rational because God exists as their foundation. But this is not a possible basis for the Atheist.

5. They claim we cannot use the Bible as a final authority because it is “circular” to argue that the Bible is true because it is the Word of God if we learn that God exists from the Bible. But consider the following argument.
Theist: What is the standard of truth?
Atheist: Reason.
Theist: How do you know?
Atheist: Because it is reasonable.
Theist: So it is reasonable to use reason to know that reason is the absolute standard?
Atheist: Yes.

Now this may be simplistic, granted. But the point is clear. There is circular reasoning and there is viciously circular reason. Viciously circular would be something like “there is milk in the fridge because in the fridge there is milk.” The problem is that no matter what the claim is, any absolute authority on truth MUST be circular. It must be used as a precondition because if it is the standard, it must be self-referential or else it would not be the standard. If it can be inferred from something else, then it, itself, is not the absolute standard.

This is all for now. I’m sure I’ll add more later.