You can’t reason with an atheist, Diamond. There is simply no common ground of discourse.
If by "reason with" you mean "proselytize into believing as I do", you are probably correct. The notion that all atheists are incapable of reason is ridiculous and false on its face. I understand that people often lapse into hyperbole when engaging in discussion of a topic important to them, but brash insult is uncalled for, don't you think?
Ditto for accepting false and manufactured quotations, and accepting assertions that political evil, abortion, homosexuality, and failure to take out the trash all originated with Darwin.
That is not what I'm doing here, disrgr: I am not proselytizing. As far as I'm concerned, you can believe whatever you want to, and do.
Also what I wrote isn't hyperbole. You are invited to observe the world of man, nature, and society, and to try to understand the way things actually are: i.e., some (most) things change, but other things never do; the universe presents itself to us as a dynamic, integrated whole; the natural world manifests regularities, due to which we are able to apply reason and experience to the solution of problems; there are universal laws of nature and of morality; and so forth. Then there is the simple, pesky matter of accounting for a universe that contains intelligent beings. One can state that a world that contains intelligent beings cannot have less than an intelligent cause. Then start totting up all the evidence from these different yet related lines of inquiry....
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is just to consult the natural empirical record here. Then try to come up with a reasoned explanation of such things which obviates the necessity of the ultimate principle, ground of being, intelligent cause and "guide to the system" that we Christians call God.
Then please report back to me, I'm interested in your views. Good luck!