The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
-Brennan Manning
Sounds good. Is it true? My experience is that most atheists don’t make the intellectual mistake of gauging the truth of claims by the behavior of the claimers. The Christian lifestyle is no evidence one way or another of whether God exists. It just isn’t. I suspect; however, that religion is often accepted for expressive and social reasons. People become Christians because they like they like associations that come with it. “I’m a Christian” is not about what you believe, it’s about who you think you are or who you want others to see you as. They believe what they have to in order to in order to achieve a social or self-expressive end without feeling cognitive dissonance from inconsistency.
This is how I see all political groups and religions by the way, it is not unique to Christianity.
What is the single greatest cause of atheism? My experience is that theists have failed to “give a reason for the hope that is in them” It’s in the bible might be “a reason” literally, it’s not an intellectually satisfying reason (a sounds argument). Faith is not an intellectually satisfying reason if one is a fideist (Faith over and against Reason). We should have a good and proper reason for believing what we believe, and we should have a good and proper reasons for the new beliefs we take on. Surrendra Gangadean does this in A Philosophical Foundation.
