You may not be a real atheist, or you may go by that name when in fact you're more of an agnostic—you feel there are things we just can't know—but you are so incensed by the excesses of religion that you cling to the atheist moniker.  From the Christian point of view, you can be called a materialist—one who believes reality is confined to what can be experienced in a rather predictable, knowable way.

Honest atheists admit to the limitations of what we can know, but find the whole religious idea of God either unknowable or unthinkable, but certainly beyond what we can see, taste, touch, smell or hear.  Furthermore, if God wanted to make himself known, all he would have to do is appear. And he doesn't, so belief in God is irrelevant at best and foolishly dangerous at worst.

At the risk of over-reducing your case, know that it's not our intention here to attack your position or set up a straw-man argument.   Rather we mean to pursue your line of thought and step into your worldview.

 

We know your life has an irretrievable emptiness.

We know that without God, you necessarily live in avoidance of death that is certainly imminent for you and all you love. If not in a state of constant avoidance, you are regularly terrorized by the void—by the absurd complications of chance that have resulted in you, us, and the mysteries of our self-awareness. It is truly a terror to be self-aware in a godless void of universe. You are among the greatest of intelligences this cosmos has ever seen. That is humbling.

We know the horror of the particular self-awareness that life and consciousness may be all nothing other than the fickle progression of DNA—a coruscation of random complexity—a terribly temporal fluke of our expanding universe.

We can put ourselves in your shoes—if only for a few moments—by imagining that there is no God. We too can feel that the existence we live in as an extremely strange and inexplicable wonder. With no God above, behind, beyond it all, we can feel the amazement that we exist at all.

In a universe full of hot, deadly, radiant light and heat, we are able to continue living only because the conditions are—amazingly—just right.

We can imagine that those factors might be so completely extraordinary that it requires trillions of galaxies with trillions of stars in order for there to be even one where everything is just so completely well-balanced.

We want to let others know we're here if there are any others, but this won't happen in our lifetime. We're unfortunately far apart from one another, and human life is pitiably short compared to geological—let alone astronomical—time.

To be a person is to live an infinitesimal life, compared to all around us. Our lives are a miniscule flash in world history, and history a flash in geological time, and our solar system a flash in universal time.

We're not likely to have the satisfaction of knowing much of anything; we die too soon and the results will not be in.

If we are the only occurrence of self-aware, self-conscious life in the universe, then we can feel the sadness of knowing that everything of which we are self-aware—history, science, arts, religions—all will die alone.  Not only that, but no one will exist to appreciate, pity, or otherwise remember who we were or what we had been. Legacy does not exist. The singularity of an intelligent human species will end and be over. The universe will continue to spread and cool into universal, eternal death and non-remembrance.

We can imagine this as well as you.

Our lives and consciousness are profoundly absurd accidents. Life is a joke, death the punchline, and no one is laughing; no one is there to laugh.

Human life is ultimately pointless. So maybe we advance a few thoughts or otherwise contribute to history through arts and sciences—we give others something to think about that encourages them to press on in a little bit better form for awhile. Perhaps you pioneer a famous breakthrough that people remember for hundreds of years after you're gone—but does this matter?  Will you experience their remembrance?  When college students of the 26th century are poring over your writings and preserved photos intent with respect and admiration, will you have satisfaction?  No, you will be just as nonexistent as if you had never lived; you will just be dead and gone. Soon enough, so will your admirers and their great-grandchildren who will remember nothing of any of us.

Dying is really dying; death is final and ultimate. You don't get to be a ghost or otherworldly spectator. Your consciousness and self-awareness will be as if it never existed. The books you leave behind cannot contain your life.

Death is final not only for us and all we love, but death will have its way with our species, our planet, our solar system, galaxy and universe.

Death is clearly more than an obstacle to be avoided in this life; it is the largest, most significant reality in our lives, an absolutely constant backdrop that occasionally reaches in to our awareness, as much as we may hate and labor to avoid it.

Death is almighty, all-powerful, everlasting, immutable, irresistible, omnipresent. Death is the completion of everything.  Death is perfect.

If there is no God, there is still a god by the name of Death. Death will consume you, your family, your friends, your accomplishments and contributions, this earth, this universe.  In the end of things, Death will still be perfect, eternal, and absolute—in fact, death will become all things and nothing will remain outside of Death.

Atheist, Agnostic, Materialist:  you have a god whose name is Death, and you have served and worshipped Death whether you know it or not. You are far more religious than you think.

Your worship likely involves avoiding Death in all its forms as long as you can.  You fight affliction, pain and suffering—which are Death's little reminders and promises—in every way you can.  Your chief worship is delaying Death, which serves Death well enough. In the end, at the conclusion of your lifelong service, Death will be revealed to you in completeness. Death will show you its all-powerful, gaping maw, and you will—be clear here, you absolutely will—be swallowed up and annihilated.You know this is true and you know that there is no escaping Death's perfect power.

Why not be honest and admit it—

your god is Death and you live in its service.

You can complain, plan, scheme, run around in circles and cry about it, but it will still come and you will lose.

The only response to Death is submission; there is no alternative. Your best attempts at slight delays are irrelevant, even laughable.

Your worship is some form of materialism—avoidance through self-medication—whether it be new toys, entertainment, humor, accomplishments and awards—all of these are attempts to distort and lengthen the time you live in, though you know it is quickly contracting. 

Time too, is Death's servant; Death owns it, controls it, and uses it to keep you obedient.

Every experience of beauty is undercut by Death's looming shadow; black nonexistence is the only background against which anything can be seen, unless you have become truly adept at avoidance.  The sunshine of an ideal day is stained by Death's immanence.  So beauty is pretty much irrelevant, and intimations of immortality all fantasy and dreams.

Unless you can live as to totally ignore it (which is foolish for all who want to live with open eyes), your world is all about Death—your life and world are inescapably trapped in its whirlpool. In a world without absolutes or certainty, Death is certain and absolute.

Your inward sense of wonder and selfhood is the result of biochemical sloshings that mean little-to-nothing in comparison to Death, your god.

Every inward inkling of meaning or significance you've felt are nothing but the randomly interacting atoms in a moment of temporary complexity which will soon all spin out into higher entropy. Which is good for Death, bad for you.

Death is a cruel god. No service to Death will significantly lengthen your stay. No avoidance will escape it. Death cannot grant reprieves; Death must have more death as quickly and completely as is possible, for Death is perfect, and your life gets in the way of Death's completion.

Life is the joke; death the punchline, and no one will be there to laugh.

Religious pagans believed in Death. Those who didn't serve Death directly—or by whatever name—nonetheless came to terms with its reality through imagination, fantasy, and inventions. Religions, by and large, are manmade systems to avoid Death or otherwise deal with its all-powerful nature.

Some are systems-of-avoidance, like hedonism, materialism, or sensationalism. Others are systems-of-denial, like reincarnation or other immortality schemes.

Religions regularly embody these elements in differing degrees. In that they are manmade, they are dead already, and will die with the death of the human species.

All is fantasy and imaginative avoidance, and all will be swallowed up in Death, which is to say it is already all dead.

Atheists, don't fool yourselves. You serve—you worship—Death either by avoidance or denial. You have a god.

Agnostics, you are unknowing no longer: Death is absolute. Time to acknowledge your Almighty.

Materialists, all you're working with is temporary and will dissolve. The Death question is all that matters.

So now the altar call.  Death is your god.  You don't need to come forward and kneel at the front of the temple because Death has you whether you do so or not. You belong to Death. Anything you say, do, believe, or practice is ultimately irrelevant. Death is all that matters. So give yourself to Death.  Confess that Death is your god, and that all else is pointless.  Your hopes, loves, and aspirations are all mere vanities.  You are, in Death's eyes, pointless, worthless, useless, and expendable as soon as possible.

Do you really want to continue in Death's service?

An alternative to think about

We Christians say that in addition to avoiding Death, you are also avoiding God, who is absolute, eternal, light and life above and beyond the power of Death. We didn't make this up, nor did those who wrote and/or assembled the Bible. If they did, it doesn't count and Death is our god as well.

The Bible confirms the following:

1. Humankind's slavery to Death is a given.

2. No manmade fantasies or inventions of any kind are allowable. Unless God self-reveals, all knowledge and ideas about him are fantasies and inventions.

3. The only allowable knowledge about God must come from God himself.

4. If God is to be relevant, he must be evidently more powerful, perfect, etc. than Death.

5. Death in the forms of affliction, pain, suffering, misery and poverty—as well as the biological death of humankind and the cosmos—must be addressed.

6. If belief in God, or service to God, is for this life only, then it is pointless, meaningless—all vanity. It must be about more than temporary solutions.

MORE TO COME