Despite a commitment to atheism, many who deny God’s existence inadvertently live in ways that borrow from belief in God as though they share a common transcendent foundation for reality. Several core aspects of human life — causality, thought reliability, moral values, meaning, and love — rely on assumptions that, when analyzed, point beyond naturalism. Here are five ways atheists live as though God exists:
1. Causality: A Foundation for Reality
Atheists don’t travel around in vehicles at whatever speed they want, ignoring red lights, and driving straight through intersections packed with cars. They live as though causality governs the universe, assuming that every effect has a cause. This conviction stems from a view of the universe as ordered and knowable. However, they don’t follow causality of every effect having a greater cause to its necessary beginning of an ultimate all-powerful cause of all things.
Naturalism holds that the universe emerged from nothing or some undefined force, but this leaves causality unaccounted for. Atheists who depend on scientific inquiry live their everyday lives as though there is an ordered cause-and-effect relationship underpinning reality. They see the consequences of behavior before things happen but they refuse to look no further beyond what they want. Their reliance on causality is rooted in the assumption of a designed, logical universe, as declared in passages like Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This ordered creation is the foundation for understanding the consistency of cause and effect.
2. Trust in Thought Reliability
Most atheists don’t assume they are delusional or that their thoughts have been injected by aliens, a matrix, or mad scientist in lab. Atheists assume that their cognition is reliable, trusting their thoughts, reasoning, and sensory perceptions. However, if the mind is merely a product of random, unguided processes, why should anyone trust that their thoughts correspond to reality? Why trust the mind that evolved for survival when survival could rely on lies and thus the evolved mind would be delusional? This dilemma has been recognized even by atheistic philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, who questioned whether human reason could be trusted in a universe devoid of meaning.
From a theistic perspective, trust in our thoughts stems from the belief that humans are created in the image of a rational God (Genesis 1:27), and thus endowed with the capacity for logical thought. Without such an anchor, there is no basis for assuming the reliability of human cognition. Atheists, in relying on reason, live as though they believe in a rational foundation for their minds — one that theism uniquely provides.
3. Objective Moral Values
Many atheists live as though objective moral values values exist. They live as though morals are absolute judging others and expecting others to treat them according to some objective rules of morality. They live as though moral principles transcend individual preferences or societal consensus. They denounce evil, call for justice, and uphold human rights. However, under atheism, moral values are reduced to subjective experiences or evolutionary byproducts. Without a transcendent moral lawgiver, there is no ultimate standard for determining right and wrong.
Scripture reveals that God’s moral law is written on human hearts providing an objective moral compass (Romans 2:15). When atheists act as though morality is not merely a cultural construct but an objective reality, they are borrowing from a theistic worldview. By living as though good and evil exist independently of human opinion, they live as though God — the source of moral law — exists.
4. Ultimate Meaning and Purpose
Atheism often denies that life has ultimate meaning or purpose, seeing human existence as the result of blind chance. However, atheists live in pursuit of meaning, seeking fulfillment in relationships, achievements, and humanitarian efforts. They act as though life has intrinsic value, as if there is a purpose beyond mere survival. They behave as though their life’s work along with their very names will not be lost in time and that all human inventions and endeavors will not meet the end of the universe as they suppose a heat death where all the stars die and the galaxies drift further apart into cold lifeless darkness forever.
The Bible teaches that human life has purpose because it is designed by a Creator (Isaiah 43:7). The Bible teaches that all people have an eternal destiny. Atheists who live as though life is meaningful are implicitly acknowledging that human existence is not arbitrary. By striving for significance, they align with the truth that God has instilled a deep sense of purpose in humanity.
5. Love as an Objective Virtue
Love is a universal human experience, and atheists often extol its virtues. Atheists tell their spouses that they love them, yet they hide their claim that love is merely reducible to biological impulses designed for survival and reproduction. For atheists, love is not a constant and eternal virtue. Despite this, many atheists live as though love is more than just a chemical reaction, treating it as an objective virtue.
The Christian worldview defines love as a reflection of God’s own character — for “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Love is sacrificial, unconditional, and transcendent — a far cry from an instinctual survival mechanism. When atheists uphold love as an ideal to strive toward, they are living as though it has objective significance, a reality that points back to the existence of a loving God.
Conclusion
Atheists, whether consciously or not, often behave as though certain realities exist — causality, reliable thought, objective morality, meaning, and love. They live as though these realities exist in ways that transcend a naturalistic framework. These foundational elements of human life point toward the necessity of a Creator who has established the universe with order, meaning, and moral truth. As the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Atheists, in living consistently with these principles, live as though God exists, whether they acknowledge it or not.
The Breath of God 
Yes, everything in our world has a cause, but that’s not true in the quantum world. There is no cause for a radioactive nucleus to decay—it didn’t decay because it got hot or compressed or mixed with something else.
I see no evidence for objective moral values (William Lane Craig defines objective morality as “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not”). Look up “morality” in the dictionary, and you won’t find any reference to objective anything.
Yes. But why do you behave as though objective moral values exist? Why do you act as though all reality is based on causality?
“But why do you behave as though objective moral values exist?”
It’s easy for us to confuse widespread agreement or deeply held belief for objective moral belief. But when you get serious and actually try to identify objective moral beliefs, you find that they’re just widely held or viscerally felt.
“Why do you act as though all reality is based on causality?”
In our middle world (not as small as quantum or as big as galaxies), everything does seem to have a cause. But when we ask the experts, they’ll tell us that quantum events sometimes are causeless—that is, not simply with an unidentified cause but with no cause.