Romans 1:19-20, Psalm 14:1, Acts 17:16-34
The Challenge of Modern Atheism
The "new atheists" — Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett — popularised a confident, aggressive form of atheism in the early twenty-first century. Their central claims: that God is a delusion, that religion is the cause of most human evil, that science has made religious belief intellectually untenable, and that atheism is simply the rational default position.
These claims are more rhetorically powerful than they are philosophically rigorous — but they have been enormously influential, and Christians need to be able to engage them.
The Major Atheist Arguments
"There is no evidence for God." The most common claim. Response: This depends entirely on what counts as evidence. The cosmological argument, the fine-tuning of the universe, the existence of objective moral values, the historical evidence for the resurrection, the transformation of the disciples, the personal experience of billions of believers across millennia — these are all evidence. The claim "there is no evidence" typically means "there is no laboratory-testable, empirically verifiable, materialist-friendly evidence" — but that is a philosophical presupposition, not a neutral assessment.
"Religion causes violence and evil." Response: This is empirically contested. The greatest atrocities of the twentieth century — the Nazi Holocaust, Stalinist purges, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge — were carried out by explicitly atheist regimes. Christianity has been used to justify evil, but it also produced the abolition movement, the hospital system, the university, and most of the world's humanitarian organisations. The question is not whether religious people have done evil (they have) but whether the teachings of Christ endorse or condemn those evils (they consistently condemn them).
"The God of the Bible is immoral." Response: The objection presupposes objective moral standards — but objective moral standards require a moral lawgiver. The person who argues "God is immoral" is using a moral framework that only makes sense if God exists.
The Deeper Issue
Behind the intellectual objections is often a personal and emotional dimension — a hurt, a disappointment, a rejection of the God they were taught about. Engaging atheism well means engaging the person, not just the arguments.