Imams’ Approach to Confronting Atheism

this religion encountered a phenomenon known as heresy, which can be considered the equivalent of contemporary atheism. The Imams, peace be upon them, have confronted this phenomenon by demonstrating the strength of their evidence and the goodness of their explanation, and following a clear Quran methodology based on adopting wisdom, good preaching, and arguing in the best way. In addition to this general approach, contemplating the Imams' words, peace be upon them, guides us to a number of methods they adopted in discussing atheists. These methods include: Scientific prestige, increase clarification and explanation, taking into account the situation of the addressee, Pascal's Wager, positive shock method, moving the addressee from denial to agnosticism, leaving the dispute to the opponent, accurate reading and familiarity with other people’s words and personalities, and pay attention to the form of the speech. Given that the phenomenon of contemporary atheism and heresy share a number of main principles; it is possible that we can benefit today in confronting atheism from these methods, in order to raise the banner of truth and Islam.