Debate: Is quoting the bible a good argument for Christians?
Side: No

The thing you have to understand is that if the God of the Bible is true, then he loves you so much that he has given you the free will to choose. And yet not the knowledge needed to actually make the choice. See, if I love someone and have information about something as important as, say, their eternal soul, I would want them to have all of the pertinent information. And if they asked for proof and it was in my power to provide such proof, I certainly would. And this is exactly what Christians themselves are often asked to do, or choose to do out of a sense of legitimate compassion. If the Christians themselves believe that informing people around the world is a good thing, if having Jesus come down can be viewed as proof, then God's rationale in this matter seems inconsistent at best. If there were absolute evidence, it stops being faith and becomes knowledge and in effect you no longer have the free will to choose or not choose to accept Jesus into your life. Not so. Most people who smoke know the health dangers that tobacco has. Some people stay in relationships even if the know their partner is doing things they can't tolerate. There are already some people who claim that if God does exist, than the Bible makes him out to be petty, immoral, etc. and might still reject him for those reasons, or for allowing suffering in the world, and so on. Giving someone knowledge to make a decision does not guarantee that the will make a specific decision. And yes, it would stop being faith, and I've never quite understood what an all-powerful deity would need with faith. That would destroy your free will to choose if you got absolute evidence. Again, no it wouldn't. It would, however, be more responsible and compassionate than the alternative. There seems to be this perfect balance between enough evidence that would compel you to believe but also not enough evidence to where you could ignore it if you like. Which wouldn't fly in a court of law, or a scientific experiment. Most of human progress and many of the decisions most of us make are centered around the hunt for useful information, investigative inquiry. My contention is that when we are trying to make an important decision or form an opinion on the veracity of a claim, the more room for skepticism there is in the proposal, the more skeptical you should be.As far as the inclusion of scientific information, you are right that it might not be directly relevant to the initial audience. But it sure would go a long way in establishing credibility to people who are more naturally inclined to be skeptical. We already talked about the inclusion of real historical elements. I already admitted that the communities, nations and some people mentioned in the Bible most likely existed. The thing is though, there are a lot of options concerning the veracity of the Bible that would lead to this fact. If it were true: of course those places would be there. If it were fiction being branded as truth, having real elements tossed in would be a good idea to make it more believable. If it were a (as I suspect to be the case) collection of misunderstandings, updates of old fables that were believed by citizenry, or exaggerations of real events: once again it make sense that some of these things would exist. Even as a bunch of parables or metaphors, the insertion of realistic elements could help drive the point home. But the real issue is that historicity alone is not the kind of extraordinary evidence that the extraordinary claims made in the Bible would require. Further, most religions can make similar claims to historicity, and a reliance of faith and so on. So standing as an outsider, seeing so many disparate groups use more or less the same reasoning to support their claims tends to highlight the weaknesses within those types of claims.