Is Atheism the Reason Millennials are Leaving the Church?

Part 2: A Response to the Friendly Atheist

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Page 1: "There's no Proof"
Page 2: Closer to the Truth
Page 3: The Overarching Flaw

1. See the following for a longer discussion on this topic: http://blogs.christianpost.com/confident-christian/what-evidence-will-satisfy-hard-core-unbelief-10198/.
2. For two good sources see Mike Licona's "The Resurrection of Jesus – A New Historiographical Approach" and N. T. Wright's "The Resurrection of the Son of God".
3. "I believe the best explanation, consistent with both scientific findings and the surviving evidence . . . is that the first Christians experienced hallucinations of the risen Christ, of one form or another. . . . In the ancient world, to experience supernatural manifestations of ghosts, gods, and wonders was not only accepted, but encouraged."- Atheist Richard Carrier, "The Spiritual Body of Christ" in The Empty Tomb, pg. 184.
4. For a summarized set of arguments against the hallucination hypothesis, see my presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/schumacr/the-resurrection-of-jesus-a-miracle-in-one-of-three-ways, slides 11-20.
5. The most recent being the widely discredited work of Tabor and Jacobovici in The Jesus Tomb.
6. See presentation at: http://www.slideshare.net/schumacr/the-essentials-of-apologetics-why-jesus-part-1, slide 28 for non-Biblical citations on Jesus' miracles.
7. James Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Eerdmans, 2003): 671.
8. See podcasts and presentations to non-believing audiences given by the likes of Ravi Zacharias' team and William Lane Craig.
9. Lawrence Krauss, A Universe From Nothing.
10. http://www.apologetics315.com/2013/02/william-lane-craig-vs-alex-rosenberg-debate-mp3-audio.html.
11. David Kinnaman, Unchristian, 2007, pg. 26.
12. Kinnaman, pg. 28.
13. http://www.finestquotes.com/quote-id-21318.htm.
14. This argument, however, is defeated when analyzed. Peter Van Inwagen says, "It used to be widely held that evil was incompatible with the existence of God: that no possible world contained both God and evil. So far as I am able tell, this thesis is no longer defended." Peter Van Inwagen, "The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence,Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 5: Philosophy of Religion,ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing, 1991),pg. 135.
15. For more on this subject, see my article, "The Best Argument against Christianity".
16. For a refutation of this, see: http://blogs.christianpost.com/confident-christian/are-you-a-christian-only-because-of-family-14352/.
17. Sigmund Freud called the hopes offered by religion "illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind . . . we disregard its relation to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification". Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, (New York: Anchor Books, 1964), pgs. 47,49.
18. "Religion is the self-consciousness and the self-feeling of the man who has either not yet found himself, or else (having found himself) has lost himself once more. . . .This state, this society, produce religion, a perverted world consciousness, because they are a perverted world. . . . Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people" "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction," in On Religion, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, tr. Reinhold Niebuhr (Chico, CA: Scholar's Press, 1964), pp. 41-2.