It is better to live as a Christian than to live as an atheist.

I often find that the Christianity that exists in the minds of atheists is vastly different from the Christianity I have known and practiced for about 24 years now. For atheists, it seems as though Christianity (and religion in general) is nothing but a collection of stereotypes they have about us, which are more or less foreign to me, and to most Christians I have known in my life. My opponent's opening argument is, unfortunately, just another example of this. My opponent has apparently chosen a more rhetorical and anecdotal style of debate. I shall copy that. Atheist's will often claim that they have more freedom than us. I suppose this is true, in a sense. We have a set of activities known as "sins" that are prohibited to us. Atheists recognize no such category, and have no such prohibitions, excepting things that everybody agrees are wrong, such as murder, and the like. Atheists thus have a much larger range of potential activities to occupy their time with, and are therefore "more" free. Okay. I can accept that. That said, I have seen these freedoms. I have practiced them. And while they can be fun, I did not find my life greatly enhanced through their practice. I've had plenty of sex (not bragging, just saying). I've been drunk (once). I've used as much foul language as I could fit into a sentence (I used to be a sailor, in fact, and *those* stereotypes are completely true). I've never done drugs, but I have been around drug users for most of my life. All of these things that atheists mock us for not being able to partake in are simply not that great of a loss for me, or for those of us who consider ourselves members of the body of Christ. In fact, every Christian who used to be an atheist will generally feel more free after giving up their atheist freedoms than when they had them. That is, after all, the story of many hundreds of church pastors around the country, including one of the ones I grew up with. They used to not live as Christians, and then they became Christians, and then felt a level of liberty and peace they had never known before. What's my point? Simply that while everyone is different, and different freedoms mean more to some than to others, all of this "freedom" that atheists have is not really that impressive. Moving on, my opponent makes a point about another kind of freedom- we'll call it intellectual freedom. Freedom to question, freedom to search for answers, etc. My opponent states that losing ones faith is like losing a load off of one's shoulders. Again, I would point out that Christians who were former atheists will say the same thing about when they found their faith- that a load was lifted from them. But never mind that- it's all subjective anyway. To focus on the intellectual freedom my opponent talks about, all I can do is give real world counter examples. And there are many... Starting with myself, my faith has never once dimmed my interest in science. Cosmology is as interesting to me as it is to my opponent. I am a great admirer of Neil deGrasse Tyson, and one of my favorite books is The Big Bang, by Simon Singh. Are these facts about myself impressive? Does it mean that my mind is a towering scientific intellect? No. I'm just saying that when my opponent crows about his interest in the origin of the universe, complete with an implication that religious people are not curious about the question, and don't care, or are even possibly forbidden from wondering, I must say that I find that ridiculous, as would just about every Christian. My opponent wonders about the origins of the universe? Whoop-de-doo. Get in line. I was going to go through an extensive list of theists who have made invaluable contributions to science, but meh...I won't. Some of their names are extremely famous, others more obscure. If you want to know them, some theist, tired of having atheists tell him how uninterested in answering questions he is, has probably compiled a list of names on the internet somewhere. Basically, what I'm saying is that I was raised in church all my life, and went to a Christian K - 8th school, and I have never once been taught that SETI should be shut down, or that the Hubble Telescope is a tool of Satan. As for other forms of intellectual freedom my opponent hints at, with his vague references to "questioning" things, that also is ridiculous to me. My first major was Philosophy, which, as may be guessed, has a healthy habit of questioning *everything*. And I happen to know that I was most certainly not the only Christian philosophy major in the country at the time. When I realized that a Philosophy major was useless, I switched to Economics, which combines the probing inquisitiveness, and inventiveness of philosophy, with the power of math, and the scientific method. I am not the only Christian interested in the (dismal) science of Econ either. Further, the biggest names in the history of theology did not get that way by not asking questions about everything, including faith in God. C.S. Lewis has challenged my intellect more than that tremendous ignoramus Richard Dawkins ever has, or ever will, or probably even can. St. Augustine, in his Confessions, raises profound questions about life, faith, and everything else. The difference between Augustine and an atheist is that an atheist sees no answers (or at least no good ones) when he asks tough questions about faith, while Augustine, Lewis, Mother Theresa, Arminius, Aquinas, and a million others, all did see answers, and continue to. As for me, I am confronted with doubt all the time, and have asked, and answered, and even failed to answer, difficult questions many times in my life. At no time have I ever been told that I am not allowed to do this, nor have I ever felt punished by God for plumbing the depths of these big faith questions. One of my favorite things God has ever said in the scriptures is Isaiah 1:18- "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord...". God extending an invitation to reason with him...it's a very powerful thought to me. My opponent's parting shot is difficult to sum up, but he talks about God judging us, and him being our master and we being his slaves. As far as God judging us, all I have to say is...so? Nobody likes the idea of anybody judging us, but concerning this, I can only make two responses: The first is that, as God, the guy gets to judge. It's his office. What can you do? What can HE do? The job falls to him by default. Furthermore, if we accept human judgements on us -and we do- then I cannot see why God, who can see more things than a human does, who was there at the beginning, and who knows our natures better than we know them ourselves, does not get to. The second is yes, God judges, but God focuses way less on his judgments than atheists do. God spends "every minute of every day" judging us? I don't know where atheists got that. I was never taught that, nor is that the God depicted in the Bible. "But God gave laws that says people have to be killed for mixing fabrics! He told the Israelites to kill every Canaanite! He judges all the time!" Okay, sure. But that *still* does not equal "every minute of every day", as though God does nothing but sit there with a telescope, writing down every misstep he sees. Despite many instances of God judging people, the Bible also depicts him spending his time doing a whole lot more. Teaching, or guarding, or guiding, or blessing, or planning, or giving advice, or, *just* as importantly, FORGIVING. He spends a lot of time forgiving. The God who does nothing but judge is, in this day and age, mostly an atheist view. God does a whole bunch of things, judgement is only one. If incensed atheists want to focus on his big, bad judgments, fine. But why should I? Why should *you*? To summarize, every one of my opponents arguments is either a misconception, or a one-sided presentation of an idea not fully understood. Because of this, my opponent should lose this debate.