Discussing God -- with an atheist

The term 'atheist' has wide usage these days. It can run from a doctrinaire and thoughtful person, to what I call the 'village atheist'. The person who has picked up a few quips that mostly stop most Christians in their tracks, but absent any real thought by them.

A younger Christian raised the discussion of dealing with such views.

It started with a comment on Social Media by a Christian who made a reference to 'God'. Some bright atheist, or para-atheist (the Village Atheist type) compared God in ontology to Harry Potter, the Fairy God Mother and the Easter Bunny.

How would you come back, presuming the person is interested in chatting, and not a "quip-dropper".

If they are a quip dropper, you might ask what they think about life, the world and any 'hereafter'. If they come back a 'materialist' or 'naturalist': naturalist meaning one who finds in 'nature' its own ontological basis, as distinct from one who is interested in 'nature' for its own sake.

For this person, a simple question might be: "How is anything a dust-bunny says worth anything more than the bunch of dust that says it?" 

But seriously, folks:

First question, of course

'Why do you think your comic-book trio is equivalent to, I presume you mean 'God' as viewed in the Judaeo-Christian tradition?

You might alternatively ask such probes as. What do you think people mean by 'God', or what do you really think about 'God' (with a hint of irony), 'what 'god-function' do you think your comic characters fulfil' or 'Christians hold that 'God' explains something about them and the world...what does your fairy story  trio explain?'

Next stop

'Let me guess, you think 'God' is a religious idea, and you don't take 'religion' seriously. Would that be correct?'

Answer is probably 'yes'. so

"Do you know what 'religion' is or the purpose it seeks to serve?"

Answer probably about 'crutch' to give the believer some sort of comfort in the face of life's vicissitudes.

I like Clouser's definition of religion: that which is independently real, or that represents what is independently real. He discusses it in his boon The Myth of Religious Neutrality. 

There's another way of thinking about religion generically, according to Westphal. He identifies three types of religion

Exilic: typified by Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Bhuddism. These have a godless, or ultimate impersonal monism that one gets absorbed into and becomes one with...but with no more self. It is identical to final annihilation. Here the real world of every day life is at base illusory.

Mimetic: typified by both ancient and modern paganism: earth worship, the ancient pantheons, and modern extremities of environmentalism. This world is also finally impersonal and has none but a mechanical connection with the individual. Modern scientism and dogmatic evolutionism sit here.

Either option means life is in practical terms dust! But no one lives this way...what has to be explained to take one into what is real, is personhood, the reality of moral judgements, that values are possible, than knowledge is real and persons have an ultimate connection with what is basically real: the personal self-existing and self-revealing communicating Creator, Yahweh 

The alternative is Covenental religions, of which there are two, but perhaps their heretical derivatives are also covenental, but I think are actually Mimetic in concept. The two are Judaism as the pre-cursor and Christianity as the fulfillment.

The result of Christianity is that it has real-world pay-offs: modern notions of human rights, education for all, equality before the law, the dignity of the individual, the meaning of justice and the very basis of modern material life: science, are true elements of the understanding of what is true. It underwrites knowledge as being instrumentally true, and, at the limit, ultimately true.

It also explains the disjunct between our experience of life and our ambitions in life, most prominently exhibited in 'suffering' and acts of evil, even within ourselves or are victims of. Whence evil? Cannot be answered in either Exilic or Mimetic religious frameworks. Both bring the insight of the earthworm to their contemplation.