You should know the following techniques, and focus on those:
1) God of the gaps. A lack of knowledge about how things works is (to them) support for the God idea. "We don't know how life (or mind, or whatever) is caused to exist, so God must have done it."
2) Appeal to intuition. "We can't prove, using facts and evidence, that God is real. But luckily, we don't have to, because our souls are inspired by God. That's the best proof a guy can have!"
3) Unsubstantiated claims: "Only God could have made such a perfect book as the Bible."
4) Lies: "The Bible is perfectly consistent." You gave a list of 20 or 30 inconsistencies, and saw the degree to which Christians will tap dance to get around obvious truths.
5) Special pleading: "Yes, many people with many religions have intuitions and strong beliefs unsupported by facts. . . but only Christ Jesus is the real God."
Your biggest problem is that you are clearly approaching them dishonestly. You went in there looking to cut your debating teeth-- and both you and they knew so right away. Saying "Oh I just came in with an open mind, but what you said didn't make sense so I have questions" is clearly bullshit. The atheist position is the non-bullshit position, so you don't need to go in like this. As LastSeven pointed out, copy-pasta is a no-no. You should pick a few of the main points, or identify the source of your list.
1) God of the gaps. A lack of knowledge about how things works is (to them) support for the God idea. "We don't know how life (or mind, or whatever) is caused to exist, so God must have done it."
2) Appeal to intuition. "We can't prove, using facts and evidence, that God is real. But luckily, we don't have to, because our souls are inspired by God. That's the best proof a guy can have!"
3) Unsubstantiated claims: "Only God could have made such a perfect book as the Bible."
4) Lies: "The Bible is perfectly consistent." You gave a list of 20 or 30 inconsistencies, and saw the degree to which Christians will tap dance to get around obvious truths.
5) Special pleading: "Yes, many people with many religions have intuitions and strong beliefs unsupported by facts. . . but only Christ Jesus is the real God."
Your biggest problem is that you are clearly approaching them dishonestly. You went in there looking to cut your debating teeth-- and both you and they knew so right away. Saying "Oh I just came in with an open mind, but what you said didn't make sense so I have questions" is clearly bullshit. The atheist position is the non-bullshit position, so you don't need to go in like this. As LastSeven pointed out, copy-pasta is a no-no. You should pick a few of the main points, or identify the source of your list.
