"If these clowns don't believe in God, what exactly do they believe in?"
As a lay Bible teacher in a Southern Baptist church, I have spent time talking to ministers--it's difficult for me to say the word--who say they do not believe in God.
Because they lack spiritual understanding--in the Biblical sense of "spiritual"--they have a deadness in their souls that I do not understand.
Perhaps a simple story will demonstrate the difference between someone who has a personal relationship through Jesus Christ to God, and someone who does not.
When I was in college, I was having a breakfast of milk in donuts in the fourth-floor cafeteria in the student union of Oklahoma State University. A man was speaking with one of the kitchen helpers, an African-American who held a part-time ministerial position in a local church. The man stated that he was going into the ministry. The part-time minister, in the course of the conversation, asked the other if the Lord had called him into the ministry. The man said that he had considered a number of options for his life and, because he liked to speak in public, read and discuss philosophy, and help people, that, he felt, was the best option for him. The minister said again, "But did the Lord call you into the ministry?"
The man said again that his qualifications were unique, and he had a lot to offer people, that congregations ought to be glad to have a person such as himself in the pulpit. The minister kept repeating the question in a number of different ways. Finally, the man, getting frustrated, said, "You know, I really don't think that it's a qualification for God to call someone into the ministry--in fact,I don't really believe in God at all."
The minister said it very eloquently: "If you don't believe in God, then how will you minister to the souls of people, to get a message into their spirits?"
The man had absolutely no idea what the minister was talking about, and he gave up the conversation.
The man was spiritually dead. He had nothing except philosophy to pass on to people--not the Word of God nor even the concept of God. The man was totally empty. That's what it's like to have a minister who does not believe in God. A total vacuuum filled by nothing.
I suppose it would be patronizing to say that I felt sorry for the guy and encouraged by the faith of the minister. But that's really how it was.