Atheists love to claim that they are men and women of reason. The claim is nonsense. Atheism is contrary to logic and against reason.

Still, you often hear atheists claiming to embrace reason. The latest example is a billboard on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, sponsored by an atheists' association.

Above a "Christmas" scene (men on camels riding toward a manger), the sign proclaims: "You know it's a myth. This season, celebrate reason."

I see, reason equals atheism. Some people are offended by the billboard, but its sponsors have every right to advertise their views. However, let's examine the atheists' claim that reason supports their belief in the non-existence of God.

Anybody who objectively considers the easily available evidence won't remain an atheist very long. As C.S. Lewis famously said, anyone who wants to remain an atheist can't be too careful about what he reads. (Or what evidence he looks at, I might add.)

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Let's start with a basic flaw in the atheist's logic. It's called looking for the Pink Elephant.

As a matter of sheer logic, you cannot make an absolute, dogmatic, assertion that no Pink Elephant exists in the universe. To do so, you would have to know everything. You would have to search every nook and cranny of the universe, and verify that the Pink Elephant is not hiding there. You would have to search every dimension, and verify that the Pink Elephant is not hiding there, either.

Obviously, it is a logical impossibility to make any such absolute negative assertion ("God does not exist.") with absolute certainty. In fact, the God of the Bible does exist -- he's just "hiding" in a place you haven't looked yet.

Next, listen to this piece of stunning illogic offered by many an atheist. “God may work for you, but that god stuff doesn’t work for me. You can have your beliefs, but you can’t make absolute statements that apply to everyone.”

How many times have we heard that? But again, think about what was just said. "You can't make absolute statements that apply to everybody." Didn't you just make an absolute statement that applies to everybody, including me? So much for atheist so-called "logic."

Along with telling us that they are using “reason” to arrive at their dogmatic belief in the non-existence of God, atheists like to tell us another whopper: “You don’t need religion to be a good person.” In other words, atheists claim they are “good” people even without any help from a supposed God.

Think about that statement for a moment. Atheists like to accuse Christians of being “holier than thou,” or “self-righteous.” But any Christian who takes the Bible seriously realizes that he is not a “good” person at all. He realizes that he is mostly self-centered. Even the nice things he does are usually tainted by self-centeredness.

So who, against both logic and experience, is the self-righteous one? The Christian who realizes that everything good is a gift from God, or the atheist who is proud about what a "good" person he is?

But what about The Inquisition and other terrible things practiced by religious people? (This is one of atheists’ favorite arguments.) Here, again, atheists are not being very logical.

The atheists’ argument goes something like this. People who claim to be religious and/or Christian are acting in very irreligious ways.

Atheists think they are so smart that nobody (except them) ever noticed that people who claim to be religious can be acting in irreligious ways. Duh, I think Jesus noticed it. Jesus drew the logical conclusion: those pretending to true religion needed to repent. Atheists draw an illogical conclusion – there is no God. How does that follow?

So let’s look at where that God that atheists have missed might be hiding. Let’s look at the remarkable claim by a certain individual in history: Jesus Christ, who claimed to be God come in the flesh.

(By the way, atheists sometimes try to fudge the issue, by claiming that 1) there was no such person or 2) his claim to be God was “made up” by others, or any of a number of other red herrings. But any serious historical examination -- too many to discuss here -- tosses those “what if” questions out the window.)

The purpose of those red herrings is to keep us from facing this startling claim recorded in the biblical text: Jesus, in his monotheistic culture, claimed to be Yahweh God in the flesh. So what does logic do with that stunning claim?

Logically, there are three possibilities. First, as C.S. Lewis points out, anyone who claimed to be God, and demanded that others worship him as such, while knowing he was not, would be a deceiver and liar. But deceiver and liar does not fit with the character and moral vision presented by Christ as testified to by the many witnesses in the New Testament.

Second, if that same person wasn’t lying because he really believed he was God (even though he really was not God), that person would be a lunatic. On the order of, to use Lewis’ phrase, a “poached egg.” But again, that doesn’t fit with Christ’s words and character.

There's only one logical possibility left: Jesus really was (and is) God. Again, anyone who uses reason to logically consider the alternatives can no longer be an atheist.

Then there's the matter of Christ's resurrection. In the hostile environment of first-century Jerusalem, opponents of the early Christians would have done anything to disprove the claim of Christ's resurrection by producing his dead body. They were not able to do so.

Nor does it make logical sense that the disciples “stole” the body. Many were martyred for their belief in Christ’s physical resurrection. But people do not die for something they know is false. Nor is the “theory” that Christ somehow “swooned” on the cross and then somehow “revived” in the tomb make any sense.

The biblical text (including widely circulated letters which all scholars acknowledge were written shortly after the events) mentions hundreds of witnesses of the resurrected Christ.

These are all pieces of reasonable evidence for the resurrection of Christ, and thus for the reality of God. It takes a lot of "faith" for the would-be atheist to ignore this pile of evidence. (For a more in-depth treatment, might I suggest "Who Moved the Stone" by Frank Morison or "(The New) Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell.)

Nor can we ignore the wealth of Old Testament prophecies that give a detailed picture of the Messiah, that he would be both God and man. (For example, there's a reason why people expected the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem, and of a virgin.)

Nor can we ignore the fact that a faith in this God regularly changes people's lives. Atheists like to claim that the change doesn't really "prove" God's existence. They maintain that a person simply "straightened himself out" under the influence of a certain belief.

But again, the atheist has engaged in a willing ignorance of facts. There is too much evidence, of both people in history, or perhaps in the atheist’s own neighborhood, to logically deny that something more than mere self-improvement is going on here.

We didn't even mention Creation, the world around us. The natural world, which even die-hard evolutionists admit "appears" to be designed, fairly screams God. My computer is designed, and has a designer. My car is designed, and has a designer. This blog post is designed, and has a designer. It's only my body, much more complex, that just "happened by chance." Huh?

(By the way, if atheists were intellectually honest, they would permit intelligent design to be debated in the classroom. Instead, they hide under false definitions of religion and science, and use the courts as "muscle" to enforce their censorship of any discussion of evolution.)

Of course, most of the time, atheists simply ignore this evidence, or don’t do a serious investigation of it. It’s a lot easier for them to simply accept, second-hand, the misinformation they’ve heard from people who have an ax to grind.

The problem is not logic. The evidence for God is overwhelming. In contrast to the atheist, a one-note Johnny who simply repeats "reason, reason" and then refuses to think through his assertions, our evidence has many dimensions – logic, history, prophecy, Christ's character, what we know about human behavior.

At bottom, the problem is not with the atheist’s head. Logically, all the evidence points to the existence of the God of the Bible.

Rather, the problem is with the atheist's heart. In the face of all the evidence (or by choosing to remain ignorant of all the evidence), the atheist simply doesn't want to believe. (Interestingly, that very refusal fits with the biblical description of man – a rebel who is willingly ignorant of God.)

After all, if the atheist were to admit that the God of the Bible is true, he’d have to change a lot of things. Maybe he’d have to change his sexual habits. Maybe he would have to give up his self-righteousness. (The “I’m really a good person” would have to go.)

Maybe he'd have to admit that he isn't "smarter" than everybody else – and that the atheist billboard has it all wrong.