Recently I read an article by a Christian philosopher, Randal Rouser. He is an interesting Canadian chap who engages atheists in a friendly manner. He has written a 20-page scholarly paper entitled, "The Atheist and the Antitheist:
A Critical Analysis of the Rebellion Thesis."
I have shortened it to highlight the main points. After lament the mocking and anti-intellectual tenor of the new atheists view of Christians he says:
"But my interest here is not on how atheists view Christians. Rather, it is on how Christians view atheists. And the sad truth is that Christians, on the whole, are no better than the new atheists. If atheists often caricature Christian beliefs, Christians are all too quick to return the favor as in this graphic from a Christian website.
"Atheism. The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs. Makes perfect sense.”
Rouser continues to pile on the evidence that Christian leaders over the last 50+ years (although the thesis might hold more strongly earlier), mock and deride atheists as morally corrupt, and rebellious.
Here is a piece of evidence from R.C. Sproul, famous reformed professor and behind a thirty-five year teaching ministry and popular radio show, "Renewing Your Mind."
Sproul describes the following interaction he had with a group of atheists:
"I was invited to a university campus several years ago to speak to an atheists’ club. They asked me to present the intellectual case for the existence of God. I did, and as I went through the arguments for the existence of God, I kept things on an intellectual plane. All things were safe and comfortable until I got to the end of my lecture. At that point I said, “I’m giving you arguments for the existence of God, but I feel like I’m carrying coals to Newcastle because I have to tell you that I do not have to prove to you that God exists, because I think you already know it.
Your problem is not that you do not know that God exists; your problem is that you despise the God whom you know exists. Your problem is not intellectual; it is moral— you hate God.”
Rouser's thesis is,
"If you want to understand people, if you want to know the outsider, the foreigner, the stranger, set aside your presuppositions and prejudices, and welcome them in as a brother or sister or friend: welcome the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the communist, the capitalist, the socialist, the secularist, the feminist, the nationalist, the environmentalist, and the atheist ... the atheist who is your neighbor."
http://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/The-Atheist-and-the-Antitheist.pdf
I advise reading the article.
Do you think that atheists are:
In rebellion?
Fools that ignore important truths about their world?
Blind, by God or their own pride, and can't possibly understand the external world?
Similar to us but with a different set of data about the world. I.E. Differing sets of conceptual knowledge and experiential knowledge?