I apologize in advance for the extreme length of this. But I think it's interesting. I tried to cover WAY too many topics at once, so if something is unclear, please ask and I will do my best to explain better. So delve in if you have the time. And feel free to send rebuttals to my rebuttals, hate mail, praise mail, or free cash and prizes. Let's get it on:
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letter 1

There is no God. It's one of the biggest conspiracies in the world. It's the product of a handful of people’s cunningness at the beginning of time who saw the beginning of civilisation as a big opportunity to start a big lie and continue it along as long as they can. The way they saw it, the only way one such great fabrication as the concept of a “God” could survive the thousands and thousands of years of speculations and doubts of years to come is to start the lie right at the beginning so that if there should be any non-believers that should influence many people, they too will still have tiny inklings of doubts in their minds about “God” because of the fact withstanding that He(God) has been known about and has been talked about since the beginning. And for what can all this planning be for? To be able to have control of all human’s highest level of thinking and to trick them into such things that they’ve made up such as “enlightenment” and “peace”(This would be years later defined by Maslow as “Self-actualisation” being the highest level in the now well-known Hierarchy of Needs).

They also knew that there would be great financial benefits in such an operation. People would shower them with money and expensive things because they are perceived as holy and in charge of their “spiritual” well being.

At the beginning they had an idea, but didn’t really know the full extent of what they had embarked on, that “God” would be both the greatest selling commodity and selling tool that could ever be in the whole existence of man. The population of God-believers keep growing over the years, the knowledge of “Him” spreading over remote areas strengthens the lie more.

“God” is indeed made in the image of men. It is a sham created by a few men who concocted all of it for their personal gain way back when people’s ideals were young and impressionable.
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letter 2

as far as proving that the god of christianity doesn't exist, i don't think i can convince you of that. if i could, i would feel a lot more secure in my beliefs than i do. but let me share a few of my thoughts. suppose: before anything else was, god was. before heaven and hell and earth and good and evil, god existed. then god created all these things, and i don't know a lot about the emergence of hell and of satan, but i know that lucifer supposedly fell, and i am supposing that his separation from god was absolute. i am also supposing that this happened before god created the earth and man. anyway, god abhors sin, it's his antithesis. yet god supposedly created something that had the ability to sin, even though this is abhorrent to him, even though he loved his creation called "mankind." now, god's one desire was to spend eternity with man, god loving man unconditionally and man worshipping him eternally. not only that, but god was not constrained by the dimension known as time, he knows what we think of as the past, present, and future, even if we don't. so god knew that man would turn against him immediately, or at least fairly soon after his creation. he knew that man was susceptible to the temptations god set before him. but because god "loved" man, he gave him a choice. but if man makes the wrong choice, god loves man enough to eternally separate them from each other, supposedly either placing man in a great deal of physical pain or torturing him instead with separation from god, the ultimate punishment. and this makes sense .... because? if god was omnipotent, and sin was really that abhorrent to him, and he loves us that much, why in the world would he create a being that he knew would sin against him, especially since he is the one who apparently "decreed" that sin would separate god and man forever unless man did certain things? either god didn't love us so much after all, or he's not omnipotent, or this is just another story contrived to explain things that man doesn't understand.

let's take a look, for a second, at all the religions, faiths, beliefs, ideas, and creeds that exist in this world. heck, look at the multitude of differences that occur just within the sphere of christianity. or the differences in belief that occur between hindus or muslims sects. and don't forget all the people who believe that they are a part of god, and that god is made of different things. and what about those people who don't believe in a god at all? and what about the beliefs that have come and gone, the gods of the greeks and the romans and the rites of the pagans (yes, i know some people still adhere to this today, to some degree), etc etc etc. what about emperor worship? will the belief systems of our time eventually be considered outdated and ridiculous as well? so what really gives us the right to say that we are right, they are wrong, any of us (i know, this sort of goes against the whole premise of this contest, but this is my view)? what are the chances that one of us is right, really? well, i could sit down and calculate it for you, but i think judging by the enormous amount of different beliefs out there, i can safely say that the probability of this is very, very small.

now, something you didn't mention in your contest information was the authenticity of the divinity of jesus christ. i had to read a whole long essay in theology class about the different things jesus could have been: lord, liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. and of course the person that wrote this essay "proved" that christ could not be liar, lunatic, guru, or myth based on - dun dun dun - you guessed it, passages from the bible. naturally, basing the argument on this book would convince any red-blooded agnostic such as myself that christ is indeed divine. but someone could easily prove that christ wasn't divine - i mean, look, they have four possibilites that he isn't and one that he is, doesn't that say something right there? and i won't even get started on the subject of the resurrection, because frankly i think that i should not touch it. i would have to get into the subjects of delusional behavior and the madness of crowds, neither of which i know enough about to really convince you of anything, just enough to convince myself. the madness of crowds stuff also deals with the subject of christ and the miracles he performed before hundreds of people. i mean really, be practical. be realistic.

this leads us into the next part of the contest, the authenticity of the bible. if the bible isn't even real, then we don't even have to bother with the rest of it really. this year i wrote a paper on the writings of the apostle paul, and i was quite interested to discover that of the thirteen books of the bible attributed to the apostle paul, 80-90% of experts believe that three of these books (the pastorals: I and II timothy and titus) could not have been written by the man believed to be the apostle paul if he lived in time the bible claims he did. most critics strongly disagree about the authenticity of colossians, ephesians, II thessalonians. even the books that they consider to be authentically written by paul do not necessarily contain true information. and that's only the writings of paul! a christian does not consider the holy books of other religions to be holy. why? because everyone else is wrong. everyone believes everyone else is wrong! it's a huge mess.

then there's the subject of man's psychological need for religion. just read some of william james's or sigmund freud's thoughts on the matter. and don't forget that psychologists and scientists, depending of course on their beliefs, will either justify or condemn religion. now personally, at this point, i'm left a bit confused. who's right? my baptist friends, my methodist parents, my teachers at an episcopal high school who were required to teach us that christianity is right, the scientists and psychologists, my theology teacher or my atheist friends? frankly, i'm starting to think that none of them are right, because i think you can't be "right" about something like this. or at least i don't think i can be. each person can only be right for him or herself. so grant, even though i personally don't think that christianity, the bible, or god are right, authentic, or real, respectively, i respect your beliefs even if they do not concur with mine. i do not believe that i could convince you otherwise, and honestly i would feel wrong trying to do any more than present you with alternative points of view. so i guess i don't really deserve to win any prize (unless you want to give it to me, of course), but at least i emailed you. i hope this makes a little bit of sense, i really didn't put a great deal of thought or research into this, so don't anyone tear me apart for my views, ok? just stop and think about your own beliefs, that's all i ask.

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My overly long reply

In reference to the first letter, I would need more information to aptly reply. I am not absolutely sure who is being referred to when the ‘handful of people’ is talked about. And I am not sure what the time period is being talked about either. So I hope to cover what was said in response to the second letter.

Now for the second letter. What is being discussed in the first section of the letter is what has been aptly named “the problem of evil.” This goes along quite nicely with “the problem of pain.” Now you might have heard of these because they are slowly becoming well known topics. I’ll put it simply. Christians believe that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent (all good, all knowing, and all powerful). So simple reason would show us that:

1. If God is good, He would want to stop the suffering and evil in the world.
2. If God is all knowing, He would know how to do this.
3. And if God is all-powerful, He could do it.

With that ground, and the word “evil” being described as sin, pain, etc, I will now go into why this argument is not valid:

The Deductive Problem of Evil

This form of the problem of evil argument says that since God hates sin, God is all-good, and therefore it is logically impossible to assume that God could create something that had the ability to sin. Therefore, there is no God. So to look at each part of this problem, I will use Plantinga’s reply (he’s a well known philosopher…check out “Warranted Christian Belief”). First we examine the problem:

1. God exists
2. God is omnipotent
3. God is omniscient
4. God is omnibenevolent
5. God created the world
And
6. The world contains evil

The first question to ask is, “Where is the contradiction?” A contradiction is a proposition that conjoins two contradictory claims. From what is being said here, there is no contradiction, unless one wants to say that it is implicitly contradictory, not explicitly.

So we then tackle the question of God’s omnipotence. The first assumption that is made is that God can do anything. Though it sounds odd, this is not true. There are actually limits to God. “Ha,” you should all now be saying, “then God is NOT omnipotent!” This is, however, not true. There are two types of impossibilities: physical impossibilities and logical impossibilities. If one goes into the physical possibilities of a divine being, he or she will find themselves in a viscous circle of saying that God is omnipotent because He can do what He can do. Which tells us nothing (Thomas Aquinas). So we must then look at logical impossibilities. The things that God cannot do are pseudotasks. Like creating a square circle. No, God cannot create a square circle. God cannot create two mountains without a valley in-between them. These are logical impossibilities. And according to Aquinas, and other philosophers, a beings inability to perform a pseudotask does not count against its power. So it is better to say that a pseudotask cannot be done, rather than say that God cannot do a pseudotask.

Don’t worry…if you bare with me this is actually going somewhere.

Now the question of whether a good being would eliminate evil as far as it can. According to Ron Nash (well known philosopher), if I hit my thumb with a hammer, that causes pain, or evil (not spiritual evil, but evil under the original description). If I then amputate my arm, I will have no more throbbing in my thumb, but at what cost? At a much greater cost to good than necessary. This can be associated with God and his ability to take away sin. If God was to take away sin, he would have to take away free will. When God created man, man was given free will so he would not be a machine doing what the electrician programmed him to do. So would it not be logical to say that God might let some evils exist because the removal of those evils would allow a much greater evil to exist?

The common argument at this point is well spoken by Mackie (well known philosopher). He argues that God could create a world in which man can only choose to do what is morally good. Therefore, he is still ‘choosing’ to do good, and there is no evil since he cannot choose to do evil. Plantinga replies by showing that it is not possible to create a being with the ability to do moral good without also creating the ability to do moral evil. Example: Once light was created, it was inevitable that there would also be dark. Darkness is the opposite of light, so if light exists, darkness must also exist. In the same respect, you cannot have moral good without moral evil. They are two sides to the same coin. So if God wanted to give humans free will, He would have to create a world in which evil was possible.

Does this then answer the question of why would God create man if He is omniscient and knew that man would sin? Let’s simplify:

1. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good
2. It was not without God’s power to create a world containing moral good without creating one containing moral evil
3. God created a world containing moral good
4. Therefore, God created a world containing moral evil
5. Therefore, evil exists

The Inductive Problem of Evil

Once philosophers stopped arguing that it was logically impossible for evil and a good God to exist, they moved on to the inductive problem of evil. William Rowe said, “There remains, however, what we may call the evidential form - as opposed to the logical form - of the problem of evil: the view that the variety and profusion of evil in our world, although perhaps not logically inconsistent with the existence of the theistic God, provides, nevertheless, rational support for atheism.” In other words, this is going from saying “Theism is logically false” to saying “it is probable that Theism is false.” The argument is much lessened.

The argument goes like this:

1. If God exists, then all evil has a justifying reason
2. But it is not the case that all evil has a justifying reason
3. Therefore, God does not exist

This is obviously a valid argument. But it is only valid if the premise is proved true. William Hasker (guess what? A well known philosopher) said, “God exercises…a meticulous providence – that is, a providence in which all events are carefully controlled and manipulated in such a way that no evils are permitted to occur except as they are necessary for the production of a greater good. The only gratuitous evils that could be allowed would be those already mentioned, consisting of the morally wrong choices of free beings and of the immediate consequences of those choices.” In other words, there is no such thing as evil that is not justified. Therefore the argument for the inductive problem of evil is invalid.
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You ask how any of us could possibly say that someone else is wrong in his or her belief system. How, with so many sects, religions, and belief systems, could one person say that he or she has the absolute answer? The end all. The truth. Sounds pretty ridiculous huh? I can explain very easily. With so many different beliefs, you have probably noticed a little bit of contradiction. So, let’s use some simple logic:

1. Christianity says it is the only true belief system
2. This is either true or false
3. If false, Christians are closed-minded and trusting in the wrong thing
4. If true, every other belief system is wrong, and those who do not follow Christianity suffer eternal consequences
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Whether Jesus Christ was real or not, and whether or not He did what the Bible says he did is a huge foundation in the Christian belief system. You said that what you heard about him being a liar, lunatic, etc was all founded in the Bible. I have also heard that argument and thought it very reasonable. BUT, like you said, it was purely from the Bible. So I will offer you these historically accepted men’s quotes, who you can look up yourself:

Cornelius Tacitus (c. A.D. 55-120)

“But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that price could bestow, nor all the atonement which would be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Tome also.”

Lucian of Samosata

“The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day – the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account...You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property.”

These get long, so I won’t go much further. You can do further research yourself:

Suetonius- talks of Christians dying for their beliefs

Pliny the Younger- talks of religious ceremonies and beliefs of Christians

Mara Bar-Serapion- talks about God justly handing out punishments

The Talmud (which is even Jewish)- talks about the Passover, the crucifixion, etc

Josephus- talks about the miracles of Jesus of Nazareth, AND talks about Him appearing to His disciples after the third day in the tomb. This man is a non-Christian Jew, and he said that Jesus rose from the dead.

So, I believe that it is safe to say that Jesus did live, do miracles (or works of some kind), and was crucified. These men’s works are recognized as historically accurate. They talk about Jesus. And what they say is confirmed in the Bible. And I will also not go into the resurrection very thoroughly right now (although I could) because it would take forever. I’m sure you’ve heard all the possibilities. His body was stolen (but if so, then why would the apostles ALL die for their beliefs that Christ rose from the dead? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t die for something that I wasn’t 100% sure happened), there was mass hallucination (but only certain psychological types have hallucinations, and the crowds that would have seen Christ were not of one particular psychological type, therefore how could a huge crowd have a mass vision of the same thing happening?), He wasn’t really dead (but when he was stabbed in the side, blood and water came out, separately, which is scientific proof that he was dead). Etc. Etc. Etc. I’ll go into it later if you want.
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Ah yes, the Bible. True, if the Bible is not real, then we can toss Christianity into the garbage can. If it can be proved that anything in the Bible is not true, then hey, I’ll give up Christianity. But so far, that has not been done.

The books that were chosen for the Bible were tested for their canonicity. They were lined up with the canon to see if the book was written by a prophet of God. To see if the works talked about were confirmed in other places. Was it accepted by the people of God? Etc. Truths like whether or not books were written by prophets of God were cross-referenced with other writers who’s works were outside of the Bible. I can also go into the Talmud, the apocrypha, etc, but this could go on and on and in many circles. Once more, if you would like more justification, please ask and I will write specifically on this topic.

The Bible has never been proven historically wrong. Many other books contain historical landmarks, sites, cities, towns that cannot be found. But where the Bible talks about a city or historical landmark, even if it had not been found yet, it was right. Historians have used the Bible to find cities and civilizations. Everything about the historicity of the Bible is completely true, down to rulers names, types of money, positions of bodies of water, gravesites, and much more.

One of the best proofs is in the prophecies. Though other books claim to be holy, or inspired, or written by God’s workers, these books either change constantly, or have been proven wrong. Books like the Koran and the Book or Mormon and parts of the Veda say they are inspired, but those books do not contain predictive prophecy. The Bible, however, has thousands of predictions. Every single one of the predictions, up until this time, have come true. Even predictions thought of as crazy, insane, impossible, have come true. The only predictions that have not come true are the predictions that are of our future. The Bible has never been proven wrong on any front. If it ever was, Christianity would unravel. But from what historians, philosophers, and logicians can tell, it can’t be.
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You asked me to look at man’s psychological need for religion. Especially from the brilliant minds of Freud and James. I am glad you brought up some non-Christian philosophers, because it is always good to get both sides of the story. Freud said, “These [religious beliefs], which are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. As we already know, the terrifying impressions of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection – for protection through love – which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father, but this time a more powerful one. Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of lie; the establishment of a moral world0order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in human civilization; and the prolongation of earthly existence in a future life provides the local and temporal framework in which these wish-fulfillments shall take place.”

In other words, man needs protection from his father when young. This feeling of needing protection carries over. So man creates “God” to fill the role of a more powerful father. Freud calls this “wish-fulfillment.” He calls believing in religion ‘infantile’ and says that he hopes mankind will some day rise out of the sad condition of having to use a crutch like God. This is much the same as Marx’s beliefs on religion. And Freud and Marx weren’t even the first brilliant thinkers to say that religion is a condition of the mind. Jean-Jacques Rousseau said it was from the corrupt culture. David Hume came up with a Freudian realization about religion before Freud did.

So what is being said? Theistic belief, so say Freud, Marx, Darwin, etc, is not warranted. Freud says that theistic belief is wishful thinking, and therefore expects us to completely disregard it since it is only wishful thinking. But this is, however, not true. I will not go into proving that Christianity is warranted, since this is already long and Plantinga spends over 150 pages on logically proving that belief in God, the Bible, and Jesus is warranted. However, like I have said before, if you would like to hear some of this I will go into details in another letter.
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One of the last things said was that you yourself cannot make the decision of what is ‘right’ for others. This begs the question of what is right? Is there such thing as absolute truth? Is there some kind of truth that is true for all people, in all places, at all times? Or is truth something that I can personally develop and mold? Can anyone tell me what truth is? I will argue that there is such thing as absolute truth, and will say that anyone can know the truth. The problem with moral relativism (what’s right for me is right for me and what’s right for you is right for you) is that nobody holds it 100%. I have never met anyone who believes this so firmly that they will not waver. Why? Because if someone holds this belief 100% I can rape their wife, or steal their car, or sexually exploit and then brutally murder their children…as long as it’s right for me. If I can make any kind of argument that something is right for me, then nobody could tell me otherwise. If I believe that murder is the best form of catharsis and that I cannot live peacefully without killing, then a true moral relativist will have to agree that I’m right in killing. So I will say that anyone can know the truth. It is just a matter of finding THE truth. If everyone is saying everyone else is wrong, they can’t all be right. If Christianity says that Jesus is the only way to go to Heaven, and Mormonism says it’s through good works, they CAN’T both be right. It is not possible. So in other words, there are beliefs that are not true. And just like before when we talked about there being light and dark, it’s the same here. If there are false beliefs, there are true beliefs. Two sides to the same coin.
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I truthfully do not expect this to drastically change anyone. I am not trying to shatter anyone's worldviews. I am merely asking the same thing asked in the second letter, "Please take a look at what you believe." I have. I know what I believe. I have done so much in depth research that I am sure of my beliefs. So no, I will not bash people's beliefs, but I will say that if they can look at the facts I have given, and then come up with some rebuttal that is logical, then I have done all I can to try and give an alternate point of view. Thanks for listening.

Sources are Alvin Plantinga and Ronald Nash (both have multiple books, you can find them online if you want to see where I got any info)