Why Bother?

Atheists are guilty of using what they often accuse Christians of doing--using “circular reasoning.” They say embarrassingly unintelligent things, such as “You can’t prove the flying spaghetti monster doesn’t exist, and I can’t prove that God doesn’t exist. You therefore have an obligation to prove that God exists.” No we don't. The “burden of proof” doesn’t lie with the Christian. If someone is so irrational as to say that my car had no maker, I am under no obligation to try to prove to him that it does. The man is obviously mentally deranged, and the Bible says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly” (Proverbs 26:4). So why do we bother answering at all? Because the next verse in Scripture has a special dispensation for a certain type of fool. If he is “wise is his own conceit”--if he thinks his foolish argument is clever (how well that describes the average atheist), then we are to answer him. Bluntly stated, we answer him because real Christians don’t let foolish atheists go to Hell. Not without a fight.