I'm building a site similar to http://www.infidels.org/ and http://talkorigins.org/ what is the easiest way to go about this? A CMS? A handcoded webpage? (Both sites are hand coded. How can I handcode something similar?)
these sites are hand coded , in my opinion i would use jsp or use Java portlets and modify files in accordingly
I'm not gonna tell anything different , you should try cms which is handle both side and it is hand coded.
Just a give to try to look at Apache Jetspeed if you want to develop using portlets , you have to just rearrange the portlet design according to your needs.