I always wonder why this kind of post isn't asked in an atheist forum. Then I see how many atheists answer back, and I am encouraged that they are paying attention, and pray that God will save them, just as he saved me.
I became an atheist in my teens. I did not believe in a god of any sort, and sadly, lived my life in a very wrong way. Now, I am not saying an atheist cannot be ethical, but I used it as an excuse for indulgence.
Which brings us to the point, that there is a difference between being a good person and an ethical person. The Bible tells us that no one is good except God alone.
"And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." Mark 10:18
I think any honest atheist will admit he does not live his life perfectly. In order to be truly good, you must NEVER make a mistake or hurt anyone or think so much as a bad thought.
But living ethically is another issue. Trouble is, without the foundation of the Bible, ethics can become a slippery, twisting slope. You can learn to justify many things, and if "the end justifies the means" is your ethical belief, then you are at an impasse with Christianity.
But back to my testimony. In my early 20's I began to realize I did not know everything, and decided that maybe there was a god or maybe there wasn't. So I became agnostic. But that made me curious, so I started searching through all the religions of the world. I even looked seriously at Egyptian mythology, but those gods failed to talk to me. So did Allah, and the God of the Hindus, the Sikhs, and the New Age movement. It started to get scary, some of the weird practices I saw and heard about.
So I decided to read the Bible, out of respect for my grandmother, who was a Christian. I did not find God there! He found ME!!
So my thought to all the atheists on this thread is try reading the book of John in the Bible. Then keep reading the gospels, the Psalms and see if God finds you.
Paul preached in Athens to the atheist philosophers on the Acropolis (Mars Hill). He recommended that these philosophers should seek God, as he is not far from each one of us.
"And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, [SUP]27 [/SUP]that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, [SUP]28 [/SUP]for“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
[SUP]29 [/SUP]Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man." Acts. 17:26-29
Sadly, most of these intellects did not want to know more. But Christianity still spread like wild fire, despite the resistance of the atheists of that day.
As for how an atheist lives without God, it continues to be a huge mystery to me. Perhaps they just have not through the consequences of a life empty of God and a future with Christ.