I’ve gone a similiar direction with several athiests I have encountered. I am proud that I have at least enlightened a few (I can’t honestly take credit for converts as I don’t know).
...So you don’t believe in that which can’t be proven, seen, touched, heard, experemented with etc.? Right? Let’s talk science then.....
Mathmatically speaking what are the “known” chances of our existence in our current state? It can’t be calculated it’s so small.
Tell me about how precise all the laws of physics work, according to the best and brightest, say Stephen Hawking. He has droned on about the perfection of the universe. It’s so perfect that even the chaos can be calculated, measured and predicted. It’s mathmatically pure all the way up to the start of it all.
Let’s talk about Big Bang. Theory, fact or hypothesis (sometimes you need to help them with definitions here)? It’s somewhere between hypothesis and theory because the Catalyst cannot be reconciled with known physics. They are still working on that.
Now I believe God started it all and gets credit for all the rules that so amazes the likes of Hawking. You believe that all the mass in the universe always existed but was compacted into some microscopic particle that blew up. It takes as much faith for you to believe that crap as it does for me to take your belief just one step further.
So.... how is your faith different than mine? You believe in something that can’t be proven. At least if I am wrong, no harm, no foul. I just return to matter to be recycled as energy. BUT, if I am right and you are wrong....yikes. Given the pretty even odds, I’ll just go with the safest bet. Put me in the Beleiver category.
(Keep in mind, your audience is athiest to Agnostic. Preaching won’t get you far until you first open the mind to ideas.)
LOVE IT, you’ve had some fascinating chats.
BTW, what encourages me are all the discoveries by Quantam Physics and other sciences that prove, among other things, that time bends and is not constant throughout our universe, or even throughout time as it turns out, which means, dang it, that time and space ulitmately are the same thing! (Only God, and not Hawking, can justify this).