Christians say the darnest things...to atheists

The last few months I have been feeling the urge to write down my thoughts on a set of questions that seem to come up repeatedly whenever Christians or other theists engage me in debate or conversation.  Of course these “questions” are rarely actual questions.  You see when someone asks a question they usually are looking to find information they currently do not know yet, in other words they actually care to listen to the answer that is given.  

With these questions that is rarely the case, they are usually asked by a person who thinks they have come up with some question that will stump all atheists and presumably cause us curl up into a ball in a corner and lament the meaningless of our existence.  

Perhaps they imagine me doing this.

 To be honest some seem surprised when I don’t.  “How can this question not make you see how vacuous your world view is?” they seem to wonder.  Though I am, perhaps, projecting a view onto them that only exists in my head.  It does seem a reasonable assumption since I find time and time again if a discussion goes on very long the theist will ask the very same question again, often claiming I never answered it the first time.  

Maybe if I ask a few more times.

Now I am sure the answer I gave was not satisfactory for some reason but I have never had any of them explain why it is not satisfactory, they just repeat the question.  In many cases this is likely because they heard the question from a pastor or read it in an apologetics book presented as a question to stump atheists, and books on apologetics are usually bereft of a section on counterpoints to the argument they just made.  

They apparently think this is kryptonite for atheists.

You might think that as common as these questions are they have already been answered about a billion times, and you would be right.  This is probably the number one reason I had not bothered to write something on these before.  However, given the likelihood that these questions will come up I thought it would be a good idea to write out my own explanations.  If nothing else I will at least have a sort of FAQ to point to every time they are brought up. 

I'll make a post on the first of these questions tonight.