I think that there is a glaring problem with Christian debaters.

Look at each of these arguments:

Intelligent Design
Cosmological Argument
Ontological Argument
Teleological Argument
And others...
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Each of these arguments ONLY posits that an "intelligent creator" exists.

This has NOTHING whatsoever to do with Christianity. It is merely "belief in 'A' god." Not belief in Yahweh. Not belief in God of the Bible. Not belief in Allah, or Krishna, or Zeus.

All of those arguments are "theistic" arguments that have nothing to do with religion.

Why, then, do atheists not spend more time asking Christians how they go from Intelligent Design or the Cosmological Argument to Christianity?

I recently listened to a debate between Dan Barker and Todd Friel.

Friel argued at one point that God has numerous emotions. Anger, Happiness, Sadness, etc.

Now Barker didn't argue the way I'm going to...

But if God has a fixed plan that he's known for eternity, then how could he possibly have emotions?

===
ARGUMENT 1: GOD HAS NO EMOTIONS

Premise 1: Emotional states require time. That is, if you at any point in time, exhibit one emotion, that emotion exists for a certain period of time and is then replaced by another emotion. You cannot be happy, sad, or angry for eternity or "outside of time."

Atheist in Wonderland offered this link:

http://exchristian.net/exchristian/2004/10/jason-gastrich-vs-dan-barker.php

And I wanted to give a couple of highlights.

1. Possibly the funniest part of the debate. Jason Gastrich discusses the fact that he believes in the historicity of the BIble based on biblical prophecy. Barker then discusses how all the supposed prophecies are vague and not really worthy of the label as "prophecy". If the prophecies were real, it would say something like "Israel will return in 1948 after World War II," not something vague without dates or historical events. He then illustrates the idiocy of attributing prophecy to the Bible: "Suppose I say, 'One day, the United States will have trouble with its enemies.' Is that a valid prophecy?"

If I have free will, why can't I fly?

Because I can't fly, God clearly has placed restrictions on free will, and since he has why did he not restrict free will in such a way so that evil didn't have to exist?

He restricted us from flying, but didn't restrict us from murdering? Loving? I think not.

at the message board, The Garden District, we have a weekly debate topic and this week it was if god exists or not. My posts are under the screen name la anaconda de chocolatee

http://z12.invisionfree.com/thegardendistrict/index.php?showtopic=532&st=0

If in Heaven , one can use free will but never commit misdeeds, then without special pleading,why not just Heaven in the first place.Loving parents try to put their children in safe places, not putting them in unsafe ones to test them for a better life later.God ,therefore, shows no love! It is theists such as John Hick who require paradise in the end.He commits the strawman and the all or nothing fallacies in stating that we atheists demand paradise. We just call his bluff.Nelson Pike in "God and Evil," adumbrates on the idea that we would be robots if we could not do wrong, but that applies to Heaven also.And so , he special pleads.God has no need to set up an epistemic distance to test us to come to love Him as no rational being would care for worship in the first place.So,that is a rationalization on the part of Hick and others.

to disprove the Christian religion?

It seems to me that the entire religion is on shaky ground considering the fact it's just a flavor of paganism that was adopted by the Roman Empire and that a bazillion other pagan religions had stunningly similar characteristics.

Is it time to say, in no uncertain terms, that Christianity has been completely discredited? It's not politically correct, but is it true? Is there enough evidence to make such a claim and stand by it? Forgive me if this site has already taken a stance on such a claim. I'm just wondering if we could come up with a good meme, like "evolution is a fact." How about, "It's a proven fact that the Christian religion has been discredited"?

http://www.rys2sense.com/anti-neocons/viewtopic.php?t=2564

The Invisible Ocean
 An Atehist's answer to philosophically based religions, Deists, and Agnostics.

Matter is eternal. The big Bang is the start of measurable time only but not existence.

Face it the world and all life on it was not created in six or seven days by a magical being. People may agree or disagree with this; some may believe in a personal god or conventional god. As for the people who literally believe in magical gardens, my words are lost on you and you need not read any further.  

To All:

This would make a good sticky for this forum. I am a Roman Catholic seminarian and I am hereby making myself available to answer any questions concerning Christianity or theism in general. I intend to maintain a number of propositions which I have essentially taken from the First Vatican Council:

(From the Fourth Chapter of the Canons and Decrees of the Council, edited by Fr. Norman Tanner. S.J) 

The perpetual agreement of the catholic church has maintained and maintains this too: that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards its source, but also as regards its object.

After all of the discussion I have had with several folks here at rational response, and after reading some of the material presented by this cite and written in these discussion boards, I have discovered the reason for such a great division among both atheists and theists.

 The funny thing is, it's not much of a reason, and yet it makes all the difference.  I have often seen and heard references to the Matrix trilogy and it's philosophy on this cite, and an example from the first movie suits my epiphany quite well.  When Neo first meets Morpheus, they discuss the situation and the definition of the Matrix.  After explaining just where Neo stands in respect to everything, Morpheus clears up the entire atheist vs theist, democrat vs republican, right vs wrong, red vs blue spectical.