I think this is really sad. The atheists claim they have a great message and this is all they can diplay as an expression of who they really are. No great philosophical statement, no hope for believing as they believe, just borrowed gifts (reason and the natural world) from the Bible and the Lord, while trying to deny Him. Why would anyone turn from Christianity to a group that could be used as poster children for serious depression and mental illness?
It could be worse. It could be something along the lines of "you lot had better believe or yer all going to burn in Hell for eternity!" That's really bloody nasty.
But let's look at it another way. We're all going to die. That is, we will cease to exist, cease to have a consciousness. And we're all shit-scared of it.
To compensate and to comfort we invent religion and the idea of an afterlife (show me any religion with a god in it and there's an afterlife promise).
Atheists say that this is bullshit, when you're dead you're dead. But atheists try to come to grips with it, to live a good life and then to accept the natural consequences of life, that is, it ends. It's about achieving peace of mind and learning to accept the inevitable while getting on with living.
It's your choice, you can believe in superstitious nonsense about gods and an afterlife, no-one is forcing you to take that on. Atheists are simply putting their worldview and it's a worldview that the bloke who tried to touch up the sign disagrees with an wants to inhibit from being expressed. Stuff him, he has no right to do that.
If an alien came to earth and visited 40 to 50 different people over the period of centuries and they all described similar events, would you believe it? There may not be any traces of a spaceship. The alien explained how things happened with the formation of the planet and how life came to be here. If that happened, 'intellectuals' would be screaming about 'the evidence' and it must be so (because those people saw something 'real').
Because 40 or 50 people over the course of centuries described similar events of a "Presence" (that could not be seen or described well), 'intellectuals' are willing to declare: it didn't happen. The 'witnesses' wrote information that they as people living primatively, could not have known: things like mountains on the ocean floor, the movement of the sun and stars. Still, the 'intellectuals' and atheists want to disregard the logic that points to a very knowledgeable Being speaking with these same 'witnesses' over the centuries.
It is true that some that believe in the Lord think it is necessary to scare those that don't believe or to use the Lord to control others. They have the message wrong. Read it for yourself, do not believe any person. If you like philosophy, start with the book of Proverbs, if you want to see old European customs, read Jerimiah, if you want to see a spoiled brat, read Jonah, if you want to see recent and current events, read Ezekiel. Because you cannot prove something exists does not make it less real. Because you ignore the senses and instincts from deep inside you is not the fault of those that believe, that is your choice. Until you can absolutely prove that the Lord doesn't exist, there is no point in telling those that believe He doesn't. It is like telling someone without love in their life that love exists; they will not believe it.
