the Christian apologist arguments have not been beaten yet.
You mean they have not been 100% disproven yet?
I'm sure it's easy to win arguments against high school atheists. I'm sure that many of them, themselves, are not completely sure why they've chosen to think the way they do. Either it just "feels" more logical to them, or they've gone against religion out of spite without truly thinking of good
reasons to do so. The never ending paradox in existential debate is that science cannot know every tiny bit of information there is to know (although the cover more ground every day) and the religious side of the argument insists that the unknown information must be God at work. Since there are things that science does not yet have a concrete understanding of, they (being the professionals that they are) hold off on judging what the real reasons might be due to lack of evidence, and the (always tactlessly) overconfident religious side does not hesitate to provide an explanation (even if it will be dis proven at a later time) based off of primitive text and the claims of celebrity evangelicals.
Putting all scientific debate aside, I think the reason a lot of people refuse to give up belief in
something is because of their own vanity. Of course, I doubt most of you would own up to an accusation of vanity because your religion likely teaches you to be "humble" and "good", or at least appear to be so in exchange for a reward after death. I might be projecting my own old reasoning onto others, but I doubt it's that uncommon. I know it stings at first to think that there is probably no deity out there; or if there is one, it doesn't give a flip about you. You've been conditioned by, perhaps, the parenting you received as a small child where wanting something = having it, without you understanding
why yet. Or maybe your parenting wasn't so great and the prospect of an all knowing sky-fairy that will give you anything you want, if you simply recognized it, sounded appealing. Regardless, you now know why a hungry baby gets a bottle, even if the baby doesn't understand the process.
But that same infantile reasoning lasts well into adulthood. You may be subconsciously conditioned to think that wanting something, and letting that want be known to a massive authority figure, will result in you getting it. That's not the case, and I'm sure you're all intelligent enough to see why. If you want something, you have to figure out the process you will need to go through in order to get it. Even then, your attempts may not succeed, but it is not because some deity was interfering with your life. Either you failed to plan properly, or someone that's better (or perhaps more connected or simply luckier than you) beat you to it, or both. Religion (or pop-spirituality, a movement I'm growing to loathe) is especially effective at moments of confusion and painful want, such as after the death of a loved one, or a tragedy, or a heartbreak. Odds are, you've fallen for a too-good-to-be-true religious promise. You may get some momentary delusional peace, but they really win here, because now you'll be putting money in the plate, tithing your income, and spreading the word to other desperate people. The truth is, things just happen. Sometimes we don't like them. But the best way to ensure future peace is to figure out exactly what went wrong (if possible) and use that understanding in the future. If you don't, sooner or later you will find yourself screwed again and wondering if you didn't quite ask God (or the universe) in just the right way. Or worse, you're thanking the sky-fairy for success deprivation because you need to believe you're humble so that future requests might fare better.
I've rambled a bit, but I wanted to say that I've recently moved from agnostic to atheist. That lingering suspicion that there might be a "design" to everything has finally been allowed to square off with my overwhelming doubt, and the doubt won. I must say, I've never felt more at peace within. Letting go of trying to please God or The Universe (or whatever) is truly liberating. The turn in this direction did sting at first, but now I know that my future success is up to me and not my ability to please the unseen. Rather than constantly playing catch-up with science, or trying to find any (assuredly temporary) chink in science's armor sounds like a losing game. Just let it go. The non-existent God doesn't care. Your life will be just as good (and I suspect better) once you lay that reasoning to rest.
None.