Thank GOD for red states to live in and 300,000+ churches to escape to.

sorry to hear that but you're wrong about it all.

anyway take care and all the best.

Aquinas argument is basically stuff like "Intelligence cannot come form non-intelligence,, not everything is intelligent, so there must be an ultimately intelligent being that is the source of all intelligence". It's like saying "You can't get water form something that isn't water" when in reality we know water is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It simplly presupposes tha intelligence cannot arise form other things.Nothing in the argument FORCES belief upon the reader.

You should type in "Sam Harris an atheist manifesto", "Why are atheists angry/" "Atheism and anger", "Exchristian.net the final frontier of tyranny", and "evil bible.com". There is nothing uncharitable about the effort to convert as many people as possible to atheism. It is a BENEVOLENT effort which world peace hinges on.

Knowing what someone will do beforehand and reacting accordingly isn't the same as putting a mind-control helmet on them.

None of the five ways nor the parts written after force the reader to say "Oh, there MUST be living being who made everything. It's alive!!". And yes, I HAVE read them. And anyone can see how The Trinity contradicts utter simplicity, since simplicity means having no parts, and The Trinity idea says God has three distinct , separate parts. to deny this is to say "well, it loos like duck, and quake like a duck, but it isn't a duck.

I never mentioned mind control, so there is no interference with free will in my preconditions at all.

Michael, I dont believe you’ve seriously considered the full ramifications of your conditions. For example, your conditions exclude freedom and love. If we all possessed the Beatific Vision automatically, then we would have no freedom; for coming “face-to-face” with God, that is, seeing Him as He is is necessarily the end of your striving for anything, and therefore the end of your living. There’s reason why it must come only in the end. And without freedom, there is no love; for love (properly speaking) is free. Without love, there is no Beatific Vision, for to see Him as He is is to be like Him who is Love. Thus, the Beatific Vision requires a time of choice for or against Love—which in turn requires a time without the BV (or else you are not free in the choosing). The rest of what you said in the first paragraph is similarly devoid of charity and I have no desire to defend straw men; so I’ll stop there.

As to the Five Ways, yes, atheists have said some things, but typically railing against straw men. Aquinas’s writings on the 5W goes far beyond the paragraphs typically excerpted in an intro text. In fact, he shows quite clearly why the uncaused cause must be God. You’ll find writings on that here in Strange Notions; so I won’t trot it all out. In short, the Uncaused Cause must be utterly simple, that is, perfectly perfect. I dont expect you to be won over by these responses. You’re not interested in arguing charitably enough to spend my time on it. You wouldn’t even take the time to present your own arguments with care above; so, I’ll let you look into these responses as far as you want.

I mean c'mon, if the story of Noah were in not in The Bible, Christians would call anyone who believed it mad. If the story of The Three Little Pigs had been in the Bible in place of Noah, christians would believe it.

You wrote: "Speaking very generally, for me to be an atheist again, the evidence would have to be radically different than it is, or at least I would have to come to see it as such, or else I would have to become convinced once again of the internal inconsistency of theism.". This is incredibly vague, as usual. It's like being asked "What type of food is your favorite?" and answering with "The food I like the most".