I have an atheistic mind and an atheistic heart.

First, I am sceptical of the existence of all gods ... but one. Many concepts of God are human beings on super-steroids, dismissed by atheists and Christians alike.Thank you atheists.

Second, my own desire for freedom means that I would prefer not to worship the one God who creates and judges all. In talking about God, neutrality is impossible. Too much is at stake.

I have an atheistic mind, and an atheistic heart.

So, when I say that atheists are wrong, I don't mean completely wrong. Far from it. But I think they are basically wrong - and this debate is about the problems of atheism.

What sort of argument are we engaged in?

Well, it's not a knock down argument. It is notoriously hard to disprove God's existence in principle. As the atheistic London bus said, "There is probably no God." On the other hand, I am not one to say that our knowledge of God is so necessary that there are no other options.

It is the sort of argument where people look at the same person and read her very differently. They both use evidence and reason, but the results are not the same and the quality of the insight is not the same.

My problem with many contemporary atheists is that they seem like flat-earthers: they look at our world, its origin, character, nature and history, and declare that it can all be explained on simple materialistic principles. They are simplistic. They turn a world charged with grandeur into grey on grey. They forget that William of Ockham and even Galileo are actually ours, not theirs.

They fail to give an adequate account of all reality. How can something come from nothing? How does the personal arise from the impersonal? Where does the moral law come from? What is love? What is the good life? What do we make of the constant, almost universal religious experience of human beings? What are the limits of science?

I know that atheists have their answers, but the answers are commonly stressed out in trying to avoid the obvious.

Under atheism, life can have a sort of interim value and meaning, but not an ultimate one. In final terms, meaning cannot be generated, evil cannot be defined and suffering can only be endured. They use how questions to answer who and why questions and it will not work.

Thus, it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.

How do atheists respond?

It's no good for them to say, "You believe because you need a Father." I could equally say, "You don't believe because you are frightened that there is a Father." Motives are not reasons.

It's not an argument to point to all the awful things that Christians may have done; Christians can point to all the awful things that atheists have done.

Further, Christianity is self-correcting. It offers objective means by which to identify and judge the evil that religious and other people do. In fact, the Christian doctrine of original sin means that we expect humans to do evil, even those who do it in the name of religion.

And it is the Bible who recites and condemns a long litany of sins done by "the godly" - including the sin of crucifying God.

Christianity critiques religion.

Ultimately, however, I believe that atheists have misread the chief demonstrative evidence. The demonstration of God is a revelation.

I contend that God has entered his own world and invited us to trust him.

We may perhaps be able to climb the philosophical ladder towards God. But fundamentally we believe in God because he believes in us, because he has communicated with us, because he has entered the world as one of us. He is a God for empiricists.

I am, of course, talking about Jesus Christ.

How do we assess him in accordance with his reality? Let's take the record of history. You can assess his life. His close colleagues declared him truly man and worshiped him as truly God.

You can assess his words. His words are so sharp that they have helped create our language and hundreds of languages. They shape lives everywhere.

You can assess his deeds. They famously exhibit a power and compassion which has inspired countless acts of care and justice over the years.

You can assess his death. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most famous and oft remembered event in history and it yields meaning and human value.

You can assess his resurrection from the dead and ask whether it is likely that his bones lie still in Palestine.

But the key way to assess him is in the context of his own people, the Jews - their writings and their history. The God I believe in approaches us in his own words, through a nation which he has created and a history which he has unfolded.

If you wish to deny him you need to do so by the refutation of this history and these words and this life.

And it would be good to avoid the anti-Semitism which is so marked a feature of many ignorant references to the Jewish Scriptures. How do we explain the Jews, if the Jewish God is so awful?

Some see evil and suffering as an argument against such a God. But I see evil and suffering as an argument for him: he has done something about it.

My God entered the world and suffered outrageous evil and through that gave human life value, meaning and purpose. In particular, he let loose forgiveness as a transforming power in human lives.

Jesus Christ is God's demonstration, his self-revelation, his living conversation with the human race.

When atheists refuse to study Jesus seriously, they are flat-earthing. Serious study may leave them unmoved; but at least they would be looking at evidence for faith and not simply pretending that there is none.

And in such study they should be aware that the science of theology did not stop in the eighteenth century. We know far more about the Bible than we did then.

Is Jesus the revelation of God? If you are serious about the God question you have to meet him where he may be found and under his terms and conditions, not your own.

There is a God in this world and millions worship him. The question is, is he worthy of our worship? Atheists are not merely against any god, they need to be against this God.

The London bus says, "There is probably no God" - the result is a world gone grey with absence of God. The good news for atheistically-minded people like me is this: you are almost right; move forward, trust in the one true God who speaks to you, and enjoy the good life.

Why? You will then find that the world is charged with the grandeur of God.

The Most Rev Peter Jensen is Archbishop of the Anglican Church, Diocese of Sydney, and Metropolitan of the Province of New South Wales, since 2001. His book At the Heart of the Universe is used around the world as an introductory text on Christian Doctrine. In 2005 he delivered the Boyer Lectures for the ABC on "The Future of Jesus."