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If you're going to try and wait it out, let them burn their charges converting your cities while you spend your faith on inquisitors and just convert back anything they flip. That's the cheap and easy way to deal with it if it's AI. AI is stupid and they'll burn the charges and waste the debater. A human opponent in multiplayer will keep those debaters around to dominate you, and then you have to ambush and kill them. That's the peaceful solution.
If the peaceful solution isn't your cuppa tea, ready the warmonger button. Keep them denounced. As soon as you're able, declare formal war or find another excuse and then all you have to do is run them over with a military unit. Condemn the unit as a heretic and Poof! it's gone. Kill the priest wave invading your homeland, pillage some of his tiles in retribution for the pain and suffering and emotional damages inflicted on your poor people being told that your god was not the one true god, then declare peace in 10 turns. No lasting warmonger penalties once the grievances are gone in 10-12 turns as long as you don't take their cities. In all likelihood, one or two of those righteous crusades and they'll stop seeking the religious victory altogether.
Edit: a final thought re-reading your OP. Consider getting Moksha (governor) upgraded enough to get the 3rd tier ability where apostles are granted two upgrades instead of one. If I ever get a religion, I do this with Moksha. Getting 2 chances at Debater upgrades is very helpful. Sometimes I get superpriests (triple spread in foreign cities, -75% pressure) which are absolutely amazing. And prioritize mosques (+1 charge) and Hagia Sophia (+1 charge) as well to make spreading your religion so much better. Add on faith purchase discounts with Theocracy and the follower belief that lets you purchase apostles 30% cheaper, and you become an apostle factory! Makes buying GPs easier too.
As for religious victory I have yet to win one. Apostles become far too expensive.
You can go for the Holy Orders enhancer belief (I usually do), for 30% cheaper religious units, softning a bit the steep price curve.
Combine Holy Orders with Yerevan and Moksha's Patron Saint promotion, and get an army of Debater+Proselytizer Apostles.... shouldn't be that hard, after that. :)
RV is probably one of the hardest on higher difficulty because of the ridiculous stat bonuses of AI for faith gen but it's basically about putchasing a lot of apostles to get debaters for combat and move them in formation to get flanking bonuses and such.
Defense is a lot easier, you need fewer debaters to be safe but since you can heal in towns and holy sites of the prophet's fate (and possibly absurdly quickly with moshke promos) you can usually handle endless fights with little to no losses.
As someone pointed out, look for the moshke promos before bulk bying your prophets from moshke city. At least if you are pushing for RV it is kind of a must. Look to time the obtention of that promo with theocracy government's faith cost reduction and +5 card before going all out.
Yerevan is obviously also a must contest if it is present in your game but since not all CS are available on all maps that's not a reliable pick.
For defense, its often simpler to just use a prophet to launch an inquisition be able to buy the rather cheap inquisitors. You also generally want to avoid Gurus on defense. Just use holy sites and city centers to heal up apostles.
Wait, are you saying I can kill priests with a military unit? Or am I misunderstanding you? Another frustrating aspect of the game is that others (mostly Barbarians) can kill my religious units with military units, but I cannot kill theirs except in a battle with apostles. So clearly, I'm ignorant about something.
All of the advice received was great, but I guess I wasn't clear enough on the game that really frustrated me. Georgia launched a holy war against me. I converted all but one city, a small one. For several turns they were quiet, all but one city converted. And then four waves of priests, each three units in number, swarmed my country, and every priest was a Debater. Meanwhile, I couldn't generate enough faith to counter them, even though I had temples in all of my cities; nor could I access the Debater upgrade, so I got toasted in every battle. Even my inquisitors, sitting on my shrines, were wiped out by the third triple attack. I was toast in less than twenty turns. ... and mad as hell.
Thanks again to everyone who responded. Great advice all around. I've actually won a religious victory, which is why this was so infuriating.
Condemnation for a religious unit in a tile with one of your military units requires them to be hostile or for the World Religion B resolution to be active and targeting the offending religion.
When you are at war against another civ, you can kill them with your normal military units. Just place your military units in the same plot as their religious units and click the condemnation button, in your unit's orders, and the religious unit will die/dissappear without any damage done to you.
Second of all, and speaking of religious units against religious units only, sometimes you can't have a full frontal battle against stronger debater apostles.
You should always have 1 inquiistor with charges, placed on your city center plot (not the holy site, it's the city center). If it stands in the city center, it can't be attacked, and most of the times that placement is enough for the other civs not to try and convert your city.
If they do convert your city, all you have to do is use one of the inquisitors charge in order to "clean" it from the other religion back into yours. Do this as many times needed, in order for the other civ to waste their apostles (they dissappear if their charges reach zero).
Hope that helps.
While nice, it can be a bit tricky to implement. Your military unit has to have enough movement points to enter the same hex as your target religious unit, then a point (or two points? I don't do this regularly enough to know for sure how many mvt points it costs) to execute (literally) the "condemn heretic" command. Since religious units have a lot of mvt points, and will tend to run away from your military units once war is declared, heretic hunting is best done with cavalry or scouts once the war is started. When you declare, it is best to have military units already in place in the same hexes as the other civ's religious units, with a mvt point left over, so that you can do a lot of condemning right away, before they have a chance to run.
There is of course the limitation that you have to be at war with a civ to condemn its heretics. As catalytic points out, this doesn't have to be the sort of war of conquest that generates huge amounts of persisting grievances. Just killing off religious units, and pillaging, doesn't add anything to whatever grievances you create by starting the war, and these grievances are the sort that wears off. In fact, if it's a true emergency and you have to pop the condemnation mechanic right now because five turns from now would be too late, then sucking up the extra grievances for a surprise war is usually no big deal,
Of course the grievances for starting the war aren't the only limitation and drawbacks to being at war.
The game won't let you start any sort of war with an ally or declared friend.
Even if the game will let you go to war with a given civ, all of the usual other drawbacks of war apply. You lose any existing deals and trade routes with an enemy (Of course, if you have the luxury of planning ahead, take only lump sum gold up front in any deals with a civ you intend to declare on). Surviving trade routes are subject to plunder (You get to plunder as well!). By the time you would consider declaring a war in order to condemn heretics you are probably past the point, even on Deity, where you are worried that a neighbor who is at war with you will take your cities, but their military units can pillage your tiles and capture your civilian units just as well as you can.
Finally, grievances are only part of what makes civs hate or love you. That list of factors under the heart icon in a civ's screen includes being, and even having been, at war with them or an ally. It works both ways, of course, as being at war with a given civ makes other civs who are its enemies like you more. Joining an existing war against the civ whose religious units you want to condemn makes you better friends with your co-belligerents. Asking them to join a war you start is a way of allaying any dislike they might otherwise develop from your war-starting ways.
It's all a trade-off. Being at war tends to stir the pot,with downsides and upsides, even if the war in question is not a more serious war of conquest. You have to ask how important is it to stop the onslaught of the other civ's religious units. If you are going for a religious victory and they are about to snuff out your religion, then you are willing to employ every tool to prevent that, because no downside of war outweighs losing your path to victory. If one or more of your religion's beliefs are vital to your strategy, then it's a good trade-off to declare even a war that is loaded with inconveniences. But, if you don't have your own religion, or if you have your own religion but the prospect of religious victory has already faded, or if the beliefs you chose for your religion have not proven to be as important as originally planned, in that case, even minor inconveniences of a limited war are just not worth it, and let their religious units swarm.