(May 8, 2013 at 11:33 am)Drew_2013 Wrote: I'm giving atheists the benefit of the doubt that their disbelief in God is because of facts that call that hypothesis into question, not because they don't like the idea of God for personal reasons.
It is very unlikely that you will ever convince a firm atheist that God exists, especially by using the communication medium of rational textual language in a forum full of atheistic rationalists. Inductive argument, deductive argument, subjective argument, teleological argument, transcendental argument, argument from reason, argument from love among others; none of these methods of argument will work. The approach that I find the most helpful is to discuss epistemology and highlight the fact that the scientific method (predominantly empiricism) and rationalism (pure reason = a priori knowledge) have limits in a variety of areas. For example, I know that a transcendent panentheistic entity (let's call it God for convenience) exists, but I am aware that it is impossible to communicate this knowledge by using rational language.