I've been running into this idea lately and it's been confusing me. The most popular way to justify belief in a God and Christianity is the self authenticating witness of the holy spirit. Due to the harmful effects of sin this witness isn't always so obvious. But when an unbeliever is shown Christian teachings the holy spirit heals the effects of sin and allows the unbeliever to see the truth. I'm a little fuzzy on this point, at times I've seen it claimed that atheists know the truth of Gods existence all the time and simply chose to deny it. In either case there is a point were the holy spirit shows itself to an atheist.
Here's a quote from William Lane Craigs Reasonable Faith "unbelief is at root a spiritual, not an intellectual, problem." He goes on to characterize the claim of intellectual difficulty as "not sincere" and "an intellectual smoke screen to keep from confronting the real issue: his[the atheists] sin before God." These are very common claims in Christian apologetics and theology.
Here's the problem. I'm an atheist, I'm daily confronted with Christianity and I do not feel this self authenticating spirit. Are Christians in general committed to the idea that I'm lying? Why would I do that?
This was actually a major reason I originally turned away from Christianity. I noticed the fact that there were a huge number of completely honest people out there on a quest for truth that arrive at completely different conclusions. It simply didn't seem likely that everyone except Christians were lying through their teeth. Not bad thinking for a 12 year old.
In any case, we've got a serious problem here. Either I'm a liar or God does not exist as described by apologists like Craig. Of course there's always option C were some convoluted apologetic justifies Gods actions. In the years since I first considered this problem I haven't found any plausible account of how this could be the case.
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