I am a Christian. However, I must say that Christians oftentimes use strawman arguments when dealing with atheists. If anything, it only hurts their case. I think it is very important to deal with things logically, admit where the other person's opinion comes from, and then address it.
This being said, one strawman argument Christians use is the following. They say that atheists must really hate God in order to say that God doesn't exist. They say that they don't even hate Stalin and Hitler as much as they hate God. Because they don't deny Stalin's and Hitler's existence, yet they deny God's existence.
I think this claim is simply not true. 99% of people would hate Stalin and Hitler more than God. Just ask them and see
The reason they deny God's existence but they don't deny Hitler's and Stalin's existence is very simple. Hitler and Stalin made their existence tangible. God didn't. Hating Stalin and Hitler won't make people want to deny their existence: on the contrary their survival instinct would make them want to acknowledge their existence so that they can hide from them (at least if they lived at their time). But in Gods case its exact opposite because, unlike them, God doesn't make His existence known and tangible.
By the way, this is also the real honest reason as to why people prefer material things over praying. Material things are tangible. Prayer isn't. So it has nothing to do with liking material things more than liking God. If God were to speak in audible voice, the way He spoke in Genesis, maybe God would be more important than various material things. But since God doesn't speak in audible voice the way He used to, nor does He provide anything else tangible the way He used to, then its no wonder why people put him far from the top of their priority list.
And even the whole business with calling Christians bigots is related to this too. Most people don't call nutritionists bigots when they are telling them not to eat sweets, yet they call Christians bigots when they tell them something that would keep them out of hell. Christians would make a strawman argument that its because they hate God. No its not. The real reason is because if someone doesn't listen to nutritionists, they can come back 20 years later with a big regret about it. But if someone doesn't listen to Christians, they will only regret it once they go to hell, and at that point they can't come back from hell to tell about it.
Again, to reiterate: I am a Christian. The only reason I sound like an atheist in the above arguments is because I don't believe in using strawman arguments. I think it is very important to understand that atheists do have a point, in order to intelligently address it.
Now, lets address the above arguments (without strawman) from a Christian viewpoint. So, the key point in the above examples is that the root of atheism is the fact that God is not tangible. Now, ask yourself: why is that?
Bible provides an answer. God used to be tangible in the early days, but then He became intangible due to human sin. So now we have a vicious cycle. Human sin makes God choose to be intangible, God being intangible makes people doubt His existence, which in turn causes people to sin even more, which in turn causes God to be even more intangible, and so forth. Now, that is biblical. The extreme version of this is when God makes it outright impossible for people to believe in Him by sending strong delusion (2 Thess 2:11). Now, like I just said, "strong delusion" is an extreme case. But then there are other cases, less extreme, when God doesn't make it "impossible" to believe, but simply makes it "harder". One example of this would be Jesus speaking in parables. A lot of people assume He spoke in parables in order to make it easier to understand. But if you read the plain text of Matthew 13:10-16, you will see that Jesus said that its the exact opposite: He spoke in parables in order to purposely hide the true meaning of what He was trying to say. Does it make it impossible to believe when true meaning is hidden? Not necessarily. One can still believe and say its a mystery to pray about (and we hear a lot of Christians saying they believe yet admitting that things like trinity and some other stuff are mysteries). But it certainly makes it harder to believe. Similarly, when God gives people over to depraved mind in Romans 1:24-28, it doesn't necesserely makes it impossible for them to believe either: after all, Paul then proceeds to offering them the solution of how to escape said depraved mind (in contrast to strong delusion in 2 Thess 2:11 when there is no solution since at that point its too late). Did God have to do it this way? Not necessarily. But it is Gods choice to punish non-belief/disobedience by making it progressively harder and harder to believe until, finally, one reaches a point of no return (either by getting strong delusion of 2 Thess 2:11 or by dying).
So then we see why God is not tangible (both to nonbelievers and believers): because, clearly, we are a lot more sinful than people used to be. And the fact that believers don't have tangible encounters with God is an evidenc in that direction. But the fact that believers have some sort of spiritual experience while atheists do not is simply saying that atheists disobeyed God more so God punished them more. In other words, atheism is not necesserely a choice but instead it is God's punishment for person's disobedience in other ways. Now, atheism does have a component of a choice. Because an atheist can say "yes, it is hard to believe in God because I never had any encounters, but I am going to make a free will decision to believe anyway" (which is possible to do, since Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is a belief in things not seen). However, God made it harder for atheists by withdrawing Himself from them. So while its possible to believe in things not seen, it is certainly harder to do than to believe in things seen. So while atheists "can" believe in God if they "really" try super hard, its harder for them to do so than to Christians from whom God didn't withdraw. Thats why I would say atheism is a combination of human choice to be an atheist and Gods choice to withdraw Himself due to other since (not involving atheism). So to say its only the former and not the latter is a strawman. On the flipside you have Calvinists that say its the latter and not the former. That would be unfair. I say its a combination of both.
And this also can be extended to homosexuality. Christians argue that homosexuality is a choice. That doesn't make sense. First of all, as someone straight, I can't choose to be gay. So I don't see how it can be a choice for someone else, unless that other person happened to be bisexual (and bisexuality isn't a choice either, since I can't choose to be bisexual even if I wanted to). Secondly, even if it was a choice, I don't see why would someone want to choose to be gay anyway, particularly since gays are looked down upon. I guess some might make that choice out of rebellion (like satanists do) but then homosexuality would be a lot less common than it is.
Now, here is a real, biblical, reason for homosexuality, that doesn't involve choice to be gay. And it is at the end of Romans 1. If you read the end of Romans 1, what you find is that people were involved in some other sins and then, as a punishment for those other sins, God gave them over to depraved mind which, among other things, caused them to become gay. One example of other sins Bible mentions is worshipping creation rather than creator. So picture the following. Someone, who is straight, decides to worship idols. God repeatedly warns that person against idolatry, but that person persists. Then eventually God punishes that person by making that person gay. So then that person didn't choose to be gay: that person chose to worship idols. But God made that person gay in response to that person's choice to worshipping idols. So was that person born gay? No, because that person didn't have a chance to worship idols in their mothers womb. Yet, that person didn't choose to be gay either: being gay is God's punishment for that person's idolatry. And by the way its not my theory; this is something I read directly out of Romans 1. I don't see why other Christians not notice it.
Now, would this thread prove to atheists they are wrong? No. Because atheists can still argue that there is no God altogether and the above theory is just a convenient way for Christians to explain why what they claim to exist isn't tangible. However, at the same time, this thread would disprove atheist argument that Christians are wrong. In other words, we now have two logical possibilities. One logical possibility is that atheists are right and this whole thing is just explaining away of why we don't see God. But the other possibility is that Christians are right and the reason we can't see God is God's choice to respond to our sins. So since we still have those two logial possibilities, we still have to look at other arguments on both sides that are beyond the scope of this thread. But at least this thread will show atheists that there is a logic possibility that Christians are right, even though its at a level of logical possibility rather than certainty.
