Last week, I started a post in which we were going to look at four different scenarios between Christian and atheist. As I am a Christian and this is more in my field of knowledge, other major world religions are not being addressed in these posts, though they certainly can be said to have the same four scenarios.
The four scenarios are these:
- Christians who remain Christians
- Atheists who remain atheists
- Christians who become atheists
- Atheists who become Christians
The first item was covered in the previous post. This time, it will be the second, atheists who remain atheists. I suppose, in a way, the first two are probably also the simplest of them.
In many ways, this group of people have a great deal in common with Christians who remain Christians. Often, perhaps they are born into families who have no religious affiliation. They are brought up in the secular world, learn secular ideas and develop a secular world-view. They probably were never really approached with the Gospel or at least not with any amount of boldness.
Like those in the first category, some of these folks are tested by being asked some tough questions about life, purpose, meaning, morality, universal origin, etc. In some cases, they become much stronger in their secular beliefs and in other cases, perhaps they are apathetic and don’t really feel a need to answer some of these tough questions.
Often, this group develops a view of Christianity (or any organized religion) that is based on what they see. In other words, they look at Christians as the basis for Christianity and decide from that input that they don’t really think they need it. Unfortunately, this happens quite a bit.
It is not uncommon for them to be very moral, ethical people. They can be considered quite good people most of the time. Because of this, they often have a certain amount of an aversion toward any religion because of how often religious people can be judgmental, among other flaws.
At times, atheists can be confronted with some very tough questions and insistent evidence and yet remain unpersuaded. Most cases (at least that I have personally ever heard of, admittedly) are those in which the atheist, like those Christians from the last post, merely look for evidence to support the conclusions that they have already formed. In these cases, no argument is persuasive.
There are various reasons why an atheist continues along the lines of secular beliefs. I’ve tried to cover some of the more prominent ones here. Please feel free to share thoughts on other reasons why they remain unpersuaded in light of some very strong evidence to the contrary.
Grace, love and peace.
