When I ask, I don't just mean in what tone do you do it. I mean where do you usually begin. What arguments do you use as a foundation for the existence of God?
There's no wrong answer of course -- I am only asking how you address Atheism.
Hi Lysander
I find that many younger agnostics and atheists today have a proclivity to be competitive, now using the advanced rigors of assertoric and a_priori deductive reasoning with increasing and accelerated skill. I also find this good news because instead of arbitrary remarks manifesting from frustration or disparity, competition for the truth springs from honest motivation.
However is it not our challenge to envelop Paul's strategy to be many things in order to reach some for the sake of our Lord's eternal offering?
In order to reach the atheist it is my first opinion that prayer and non-judgmental-love surround the possible conversation prior to the actual exchange, for ultimately it is the goodness of God that brings man to repentance, though we carry the message of of His eternal truth secured in our personal unseen objective relationships.
When dealing with the intelligent atheist, shall the Christian be challenged to use also a_priori knowledge and deduction in the beginning to first defend that God is not disprovable before offering inductive reasoning or relationship experience. For in the same way the Christian cannot “prove God” is real with a_priori axiomatic truth, the atheist also cannot “disprove God” with the same set of rules. Can the exchange upon this mutual premise be done with gentle integrity, always being an ambassador of Christ and His eternal love? Thus in the confines of friendship is it possible to be used as a productive vessel, never supporting judgmental punitive laws of evil men, nor tossing about hostile marginalization to those who don't see what moves the corporeal?
Can friendship be used as an invisible adherent to manufacture approachable unhindered exchanges?
Once a man who fished the sea his whole life, who never left his wholesome sea-side village, was then approached by a stranger. The stranger tried to sell him a fancy house, and a new life in a distant mountain range far away, for which the fisherman had never seen or considered. Can it be agreed upon that the stranger’s words will fall to deaf ears practically every time, since the strangers offer is foreign to the fisherman? I should think the stranger is perceived always as “a stranger with a strange offer”. However what if after much time of fellowship, the stranger visits with genuine care many times, and the stranger was no longer considered a stranger but a friend? Could not the man as a friend possibly then be able to finance a small trip for a trusting fisherman to at least see his first mountain?
Yet we sell no high house on a mountain but instead the everlasting truth even though it’s subjective with many who can’t receive, because they do not intellectually leverage objective personal experience for a resolve, and shall conversion primarily be possible in the confines of friendship where levels of trust manifest with prayer.