Friendly,
I can't even prove that you really exist. There will always be someone that will be able to offer a skeptical argument against any proof I give of your existence. Even I could doubt my own proof when I consider that all of the thoughts and experiences I have when awake, I can also have while I am dreaming, a time when none of them are true.
When I say atheists do not exist, I am saying not that people who believe themselves to be atheists do not exist, but that the atheism they think they believe in does not exist, and as an extension of this logic, atheists do not exist.
What started me thinking about this was
this video. It was making a point about what wonderful people atheists can be. They're "not so bad", it says -- they can be smart and generous and good spouses and all that.
Well, let's see: Duh.
What you believe isn't what you say you believe, what you really believe is what you do.
And sometimes, what you do gives you away, right?
Take any freshman ethics course, and you'll be struck by the God-free attempts to find some basis for our in-common sense of what's right. They're "elegant contrivances", to be sure: systems developed to somehow, some way, explain this nagging sense that we all have, universally, for justification. It's inescapable, though, that none of these contrivances make any sense, or have any ultimate grounding, if we're here by happenstance. None.
Just check the polls on morality. Pollsters will ask something like, "Do you agree that ultimately, what's 'right' or 'wrong' is up to the individual, that there's no absolute truth that transcends us?" And they'll find a large percentage will say "Yes, I agree with that." People will say that, but no one actually believes it. Thankfully, we know this from their behavior, and the way they'll properly consider wrong -- just plain wrong -- the actions of racists, or sexual predators.
They say something, they think they believe it! -- but they don't believe it. They're not lying to the pollster. It happens. Denial is complex.
Am I saying atheists are lying about their atheism? Not really. Denial is a pretty well-established concept in psychology.
You have read TGD. Good. Richard Dawkins tries, vainly, to contrive meaning in a universe without God, even as he mocks believers for refusing to face the cold wind of truth. All of us are quite obviously desperate for a very deep justification. Desperate, and our consciences will stop at nothing to get it. That need for justification shouldn't be there. So why does Dawkins have it?
The cold wind of truth is this: Contrive away, but it's just your lonely contrivance. Without transcendence, meaning is up for grabs, which is another way of saying, there isn't any. There is matter and physical law, and that's it, no more. There's no binding reason to object to cruelty to humans or animals. We can contrive neat little stories, but ultimately, there's no point to hope, or love.
And really no one, including, very obviously, Richard Dawkins, believes that.
Because what you really believe is what you do, right?
Atheists do not exist.
Blessings