Atheist struggling to answer a question i often propose to myself

[Neo-Scholastic]

That is precisely my objection to atheism...it devolves into nihilism. When you say "we are in no position to know" you are basically saying that reason is unreliable and that the world is not intelligible. Holding either or both is self-defeating.

To point out some limits to reason is hardly the same thing as concluding the world is not intelligible.

Of course there are epistemological limits to what reason can and cannot reveal. My point is about the efficacy of reason as a tool. i.e. that there are truth preserving forms, such as syllogisms, and inviolate rules of thought, such as the principle of non-contradiction. You cannot rationally prove these are valid, you either recognize them as self-evident and believe they are true or you don't. Similarly, you either believe that the world has a rational order or you don't. No one can prove that it does; the world could be absurd.

Nevertheless, both of these foundational beliefs are fundamental to Christian theism. Believers' reliance on these as absolute principles is repeatedly attacked when atheists dispute the main logical demonstrations for theism, such as First Cause and Necessary Being. And indeed those objections work because the absolute principles on which those demonstrations rest are beyond the epistemological limit. But that kind of victory comes at great cost. In so doing, the skeptics are either denying reason's efficacy and/or asserting absurdity. Both approaches are nihilistic in nature.