"American pragmatic philosopher and psychologist William James introduced his concept of the "will to believe" in 1896. Following upon his earlier theories of truth, James argued that some religious questions can only be answered by believing in the first place: one cannot know if religious doctrines are true without seeing if they work, but they cannot be said to work unless one believes them in the first place. William James published many works on the subject of religious experience. His four key characteristics of religious experience are: 'passivity', 'ineffability', 'a noetic quality', and 'transiency'. Due to the fact that religious experience is fundamentally ineffable, it is impossible to hold a coherent discussion of it using public language. This means that religious belief cannot be discussed effectively, and so reason does not affect faith. Instead, faith is found through experience of the spiritual, and so understanding of belief is only gained through the practice of it."

However, unlike fideists I believe that the intellectual approach is very important. Humans are intellectual beings and so are wills follow our intellect. This is why when you're having an argument and you're winning the opponent often starts to cover his ears and shout over you. He knows that if he understands your point, then it's game over for the will.

If it makes you feel better, I think you're better off than the people who converted from the reformoevangelibaptist tradition. Those tend to be extremely bitter. The most acerbic and bitter atheists have invariably been (de)converts from them. What do they DO to their sheep that cause them to have such a deep hatred?

How do I respond to these

Me: <anything from the first five ways>
Atheist: Because you are using a philosophical argument, you have only proved that God exists as a concept. You need evidence from physics to prove that God exists in reality.

Me: If there is no God then life is meaningless.
Atheist: You can create your own meaning.

This post is only semi-facetious. Don't dismiss all of it as laughter.

Robert M. Price:

* Atheist and Christ-myther (unable to see truth).
* Hedonist and utilitarian (unable to see goodness).
* Genuinely believes that Lovecraft is hauntingly beautiful (unable to see beauty).

Richard C. Carrier:

* Invented a piece of crank mathematics in the field of probability theory, is a crank historian and thinks that green men on other planets exist (unable to see truth).
* Believes that his sudden betrayal of his wife for twenty years was good and just (unable to see goodness).
* Thinks the random shapeless squiggles and flat-faced nonsense that makes up anime is art (unable to see beauty).