How to Talk to an Atheist about Christianity

by Jason Anderson and Jennifer Fulwiler

Once upon a time, not so long ago, atheism was the belief system that dared not speak its name. Even the most ardent skeptic paid lip service to faith, or at least to the blessings that mankind derived from it.

But that's not the case anymore. Atheism is a strong and growing influence in our culture. You can see it everywhere from the bestseller table at your local bookstore to the Darwin-mutated Jesus fish on the car in traffic in front of you. Atheists are comfortable declaring themselves atheists, comfortable promoting atheism, and comfortable decrying religion, which, according to some of the more prominent atheists, resides on the list of mankind's blessings somewhere between diphtheria and Nazism.

And now that we're encountering it more often, Christians sometimes find themselves ill-prepared to deal with this kind of muscular atheism. Especially for lifelong Christians, atheist arguments are so foreign that they don't know how to respond, and too often lapse into anger ("How dare you?!") or fear ("What if they're right?!"), neither of which does anyone any good, harming the Christian's witness and leaving the atheist firmly entrenched in his atheism...

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