Continuing on with Kung's argument.

I have had online atheist idiots tell me I should accept materialism because I wouldn't have my cell phone without materialism.  That I have never owned or carried a cell phone was only the first thing wrong with their assertion, you would have to be an especially stupid person to make such an argument, my experience, a surprise to me since going online and interacting with, literally, hundreds of times more atheists than I did in real life, is that atheists are generally that stupid.  And it's a widespread argument.  They use computers, vaccines, etc. etc. the same way.  But my point is that for many atheists their religious stand is some kind of scientistic cargo-cult which is based on whatever flashy tech toy they particularly like. 

It reminded me of the old anti-commie story about how in Soviet classrooms the children were told to close their eyes and pray for candy to God and none appeared on their desks but when they prayed to Stalin it did.   I don't know if that's true or not but reading about the level of stupidity in so much of Soviet ideological propaganda in the wake of its collapse, I wouldn't be surprised.  Look at what Trumps cult thought he was going to give them.

And that is only one aspect of the appeal for atheism based on what it allegedly gets the adopter.  The one that Ron Reagan jr. is pushing seems to be based on it allowing him to feel there will be no ultimate cost to him in the way of moral consequences, something which I am not above pointing out might relieve his mind in the matter of the terror wars his father financed in Central America which slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent people and supported brutal fascist dictators.  I make no apology for making that observation on the basis of those mass murders Reagan funded and supported and initiated. 

It's in view of that that I have decided to give you the next phase of Hans Kung's demonstration of the benefits of belief in God.  Not only does that include the possibility of belief in the significance of our perceptions and things we think and conclude and experience and value, it goes far deeper.  I don't think there is anything wrong with deciding to believe in God on these bases when the arguments for why to choose atheism are based in a far more vulgar appeal to self-interest and preference. 

Ground, support and the goal of human existence

The same hypothesis can be applied even more pointedly to the special uncertainty of my human existence.  It would then run:  If God exists, then an answer has been found at least in principle to the riddle of my persistently uncertain human existence.  Which means for me:  If God exists,  

-  Then, despite all the menace of fate and death, I can with good reason confidently affirm the unity and identity of my human existence.  Why  Because God is the primal source also of my life;

-  Then, despite all the menace of emptiness and meaninglessness, I can with good reason confidently affirm the truth and meaningfulness of my existence.  Why?  Because God is the ultimate meaning of my life;

-  then,  despite all the menace of sin and damnation, I can with good reason confidently affirm the goodness and value of existence.  Why?  Because God is then the all-embracing hope of my life;    

-  then, against all the menace of nonbeing, I can with good reason confidently affirm that the being of my human existence:  God is then the being itself in particular also of human life.

Anyone who wants to do so can apply a counter test also to this hypothetical answer:

Why are the unity and identity, truth and meaningfulness, goodness and value, of my own human existence still menaced?   By fate and death, by emptiness and meaninglessness, by sin and damnation?  Why is the being of my existence still menaced by nonbeing? 

The fundamental answer consistently is always one and the same:  Because man is not God.  Because my human self can not be identified with its primal source, primal meaning, primal value, with being itself.  

Hans Kung, needless to say, holds himself to a far higher standard of argument than any atheist I've ever read does.*   This is hardly the last step in his thinking, the next paragraph is: 

It can scarcely be disputed therefore that, if God exists, then the condition of the possibility of this uncertain reality also exists, its "whence" (in the widest sense) explained.  If!  But there is an old proposition of logic:  Ab esse ad posse valet illatio, non autem viceversa.  We can conclude from reality to possibility but not conversely.    That is we cannot conclude from the hypothesis of God to the reality of God.  How, then, are we to get from the hypothesis to the reality?   The answer can now be given. 

I am leaving off there because it's not a pat or cut and dried answer of the type atheists crave.  I will continue. 

* I mean the Friedrich Nietzsches, Bertrand Russells and A. J. Ayers, the high points of atheist polemic, not the amateur hour figures like Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris, PZ. Myers, Jerry Coyne, the pseudo-skeptic industry, the Skepchicks and ThunderfOOts.  Those cult figures are idiots who don't even get into the argument. Atheism as most people use the term is not an intellectually rigorous phenomenon.  It's got more in common with the world of late-night cable TV ads than intellect.