There are consequences to our worldviews. What we believe is true about life sets a foundation for a set of possibilities deriving from our foundational claims. Most people do not truly know what their foundational beliefs are. They do not think through to the full consequences of what their understanding of reality would actually entail or lead them to believe. If, as a silly example, I don't believe in or have any reference to the concept of money, I am bound to be taken to jail for the food I lifted from the local market place. So too, if I really believed, as some men do, that they are not a man but a chicken, my life choices are severely limited by this claim I have made upon reality.
Now, to give some more popular examples of beliefs people hold and their consequences, let us take the idea of philosophical idealists who claimed that there is no physical world, but only the world which exists in our minds. That is, our experience of the world as perceived through our senses presents us with a reality which does not actually exist outside of our minds. What are the consequences of this worldview? If I truly believe it then all things my mind tells me are physical realities do not exist, so I have no real reason to avoid walking into walls, jumping off high buildings, etc. Because of this obvious contradiction to everyday life, Idealism (the philosophy, not the attitude) has been generally discredited.
Most people in the Western world recognize a philosophy to be untenable when they have to deny that some everyday aspect of their experience is simply an illusion. In short, if they can't actually live their life based on this worldview, they will reject it.
What then, are the consequences of Atheism as a worldview? Atheism states that there is no God and generally implies that there is nothing other than the physical world. Atheism, we might say, implies materialism, the belief that matter or physical realities are all that exist. If this is true, what follows? First, this belief effects our epistemology, that is, how we think about knowledge. How do people know things? For materialists there is no revelation. Knowledge must come from reason within the brain. But our brains, according to this worldview, are merely material assortments of chemicals and atoms firing electromagnetic impulses which we call thoughts. Further, we are the product of a random process of evolutionary adaptation to a particular planetary history. What reason is there then to conclude that our brains can lead us to true knowledge of anything? Reason, as we perceive it, is limited only to the human brain's concept of Reason, and this concept may be unreasonable. We have nothing outside of us to tell whether or not Reason is actually able to tell us something about reality.
Many Atheists point to those who believe in the Bible and claim they have a circular argument: "the Bible is true because it says its true". And, as reason goes, this IS a circular argument. But, also circular in reasoning is a belief that the Reasoning capabilities of our brains are Reasonable because our Reason tells us so. Atheism/materialism has no basis for thoughts holding any connection to reality whatsoever. Those who claim these worldviews must believe that they are perceiving reality as it actually is. That is, they must have faith in something outside of themselves. They must believe there is such a thing as Reason and believe their minds can ascertain what is reasonable and what is not. But they cannot do this, because their philosophy does not allow for anything but physical matter. Nothing material can confirm that the mind perceives the world as it actually is. Therefore, the philosophy that matter is all that exists is dependent upon the limitations of human brains, clearly capable of error, and quite possibly presenting us with a vision of the world which is entirely false. Atheists therefore have no reason to believe in Science (natural philosophy). All thought is the end result of random chance and the insufficient brain of an animal that may one day evolve into a being that perceives the world entirely differently. In fact, it may be that turkeys or amoeba or jellyfish see the world more as it is than we do. How could we ever know? A true Atheist cannot know.
Further, Atheism also leads to the conclusion that our emotions are also the product of evolutionary forces and are nothing more than combinations of chemicals as reactions to our perceptions. I often think of true Atheists attempting to woo a woman with the line: "we are both biologically driven to reproduce, and love is merely an illusion created by biochemical processes, so let's have coitus." Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory comes to mind. To be a true Atheist is to recognize that love and all other emotions are nothing more than electrochemical impulses leading us to feel or think things are important to drive us to survival individually or collectively. All emotional ties to family, nation, humanity, pets, children, democracy, liberty, religion, atheism, etc. are illogical from this view. To live our lives based on Atheism would mean rejecting all these emotions as deceptions, or accepting them as part of our necessary evolutionary limitation, but still not believing they point to anything actually True.
Additionally, no matter the many efforts to establish morality without God, this must ultimately fail as well. There is no good or evil from an Atheistic viewpoint. Rape is merely the reproductive instinct of those who are incapable of socially achieving the normalized sexual relations of their fellow human beings. Murder is just aggressive violence as a result of competitive survival instincts. All ideas of justice, injustice, democracy, human rights, law, etc. become mere impositions of power imposed by the dominant group at any given moment, and changed whenever a new power group takes over. See Foucault for the philosophical treatises on this conclusion.
Atheists who claim they can have morality without God are borrowing their morality from theistic traditions or are recognizing a sense of morality within themselves that they have no reason to hold up as morality, but still would like to see others follow.
Most Atheists I know have a very strong internal sense of justice, getting mad at believers for the unjust ways they think believers treat others. They also have a strong sense of personal responsibility. These things are contradictory to their philosophy which has no basis for being responsible to anyone that does not propagate their genes, and this only because of evolutionary urges that are not tied to anything absolutely true. I think their sense of personal responsibility leads them to their rejection of God in many cases. They see many believers abdicating personal responsibility, blaming things on God or the devil, etc. This rightly infuriates them. Or they recognize that believing in God means that God, as their creator, would be the one they, as God's creation, would be ultimately responsible to. They don't want to answer to anything higher than themselves. They don't want to imagine that anyone is rightly in a place of authority over them. They are rebels at heart, and most of them the more likeable for it.
I often think of this when Atheists accuse believers of being scared of their mortality and thus inventing a heaven. Could it be, I wonder, if Atheists are scared of the internal voice which whispers to them that they are immortal, thus demanding there is no heaven because they are so frightened of facing One who has the right to judge them. What is more frightening, non-being with death as finality or perfect glory and love and justice requiring of us an accounting for our lives with the right to judge us? How many of us choose to believe the one or the other based on what we fear more?
Another conclusion of atheism is the negation of free will. Determinism is the natural result of materialism. Free will then becomes an illusion. And, if so, then Democracy, individual liberty, punishment for crimes, etc. all are refuted. Only if we actually have free will do any of these concepts make sense.
In conclusion, being an atheist requires that reason, emotion, relationships, morality, and free will have no true foundation we can trust in as actually true. Because of this most people reject atheism. It is reasonable to do so. When a philosophy of life tells you that all you think, feel, believe in and love is illusory then you can't actually live a human life based on that philosophy. That is why Atheists have to live as if their thoughts, emotions, etc. ARE real even though their philosophy forces them to believe they aren't. Dawkins himself, in The Selfish Gene says we should ignore our darwinian urges and act with "brotherly love". A clear sign he can't live his life as an atheist and doesn't want others to either. He wants what Christianity advocates: recognition of fellow human being's dignity. But Christianity has a foundation for this: we are all given dignity because we are creations of a good and loving God.
When your worldview cannot be lived out consistent with the everyday experiences in a human life, then it is reasonable to reject that worldview as deficient. If then you find a worldview which is more consistent with human life it is more reasonable to believe in that philosophy than the more deficient one.
For me, Christianity allows me to believe in Reason, Love, the importance of relationships, Morality, Justice, Equality, Democracy, Liberty, Good, Evil, etc. In short I don't have to think anything is an illusion. My philosophy is consistent with my experience of reality. Among other things this allows me to believe that Science and Reason are wonderful ways to figure some things out. It also informs me of what they cannot figure out. And all it takes is a simple belief that faith in One thing that I cannot reconcile with evidence (God) allows me to understand and believe in everything else. This is not a "leap" of faith, but a reasonable assent given how unreasonable the alternatives are.
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