If I were an atheist, I would not try to convert anyone to my way of thinking. What would be the purpose? Logically, if there is no God, nothing matters. There is no purpose. There is no purpose in life or in anything. There is no such thing as morality; no right or wrong to be done. To argue against the existence of someone, or something that doesn‘t exist would be to waste my time, and without God, time is all I‘ve got.
If I were an atheist, the last thing I would want to do would be to convert those who claim to be Christians to my way of thinking. They are the ones who build the hospitals and orphanages and work to relieve a great deal of the desperation in this world making it a safer place for me to live. So much of crime, political unrest, economic woes, even war and more come from human desperation. If these deluded Christians want to help the desperate and thereby offset some of these negatives that would otherwise tend to make my existence less pleasant, all the better.
If I were an atheist, I would not discourage Christians, since they are the ones who initially established the institutions of higher learning. That’s right, look it up if you are unfamiliar with this fact. Pick any Ivy League school in the United States of America and research how they began. Their purpose was to educate the masses in all things, but especially in what they believed to be the word of God, that is the Bible. Today, these colleges and universities are veritable bastions of atheism. How ironic, and how good for my side! Perhaps that one they call the apostle of Jesus was right when he said, “knowledge makes arrogant” (1st Corinthians 8:1). In this case, arrogance against God.
If I were an atheist, I grant (not being one) that I might be a little confused by all of the religious, especially “Christian”, division and contradiction that is in the world. Depending on how I was raised, I may know very little about any religion except what I see on television. There sure enough are some “crazies” out there who take things to extremes, and that can give one a skewed view for sure.
In spite of the above, if I were an atheist, I would be without excuse for my atheism. Why? I would be without excuse because the entire creation is itself an irrefutable evidence of His existence (see Romans 1:18-20). How could the beauty of this universe exist in such order without a purposeful designer who had the power and resources necessary to pull it off? Even more important, how could a purely material, unguided, purposeless universe be responsible for “creating” the immaterial quality I, and every other human being possesses of being able to appreciate all of this beauty? The simplest sense of aesthetics transcends all things material! Yes, though confusion may exist in my mind regarding religion, there can be no confusion over the existence of someone greater than me who is responsible for all I see.
If I were an atheist and I thought about it….. well, then I would not be an atheist.
Marty Kessler