Problem of suffering. Free will defense. Evil is a consequence of our free will, which is a gift from God. Animal suffering? Thinkers like Descartes concluded that animals were automatons. I believe he vivisected (a) dog(s). Furthermore, a Deus malus remains a valid option.
Argument from absence of evidence/proof. There’s not an iota of evidence for God. Yes, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A classic case of argumentum ad ignorantiam. Anselm’s ontological proof stands unrefuted in any satisfactory way.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Response? There is extraordinary evidence (for the resurrection) - eyewitnesses, hundreds of them; Christian martyrs; the 2 billion Christians.
Argument from bad design. There are many instances of bad design e.g. we can choke on our food, the retina has a bad configuration, and so on. This is not the work of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. Response? Cherry-picking/confirmation bias. Only looking at a few, minor flaws and ignoring the overall perfection in form.
The long wait argument. Jesus (2kya), h. sapiens (200 kya), hominids (2.5 gya), life (4000 gya), the universe (13800 gya). That’s a long, long wait for God to reveal himself, that too to uneducated iron-age peasants who didn’t even know the earth revolved the sun. Response? God’s self-sacrifice is retroactive as well as prospective, all are saved.
The magic bullet argument. This argument refutes any and all arguments against God. It’s potency lies in putting God beyond human comprehension. “God moves in a mysterious way,”, “God’s ways are higher”.
Antitheism. God is undesirable because God is ultimately a celestial despot - has us under round-the-clock surveillance, can punish us for thought crimes, demands the surrender of our will to His. Well, that’s wishful thinking. Just because you don’t want something to be true doesn’t make that thing false.
The infinite regress. If God created the universe then who created God? This is a misunderstanding of God who is eternal and so uncreated and flies against cosmology that informs us of a beginning (BBT)
Arguments from divine hiddenness often overlook how widespread religious belief is and how many people report powerful, sometimes life‑altering experiences of the divine. Dismissing these experiences as “just psychology” may be true, but it is also a broad, easily applied explanation that risks ignoring the scale and phenomenological force of the data.
Occam’s razor. The argument from simplicity states that a universe that just is is much simpler than a universe + God. Refuted by the question, why is there something rather than nothing?
Yes, I quite agree with this. I think God created a world with an ecosystem, not just a bunch of animals, and called it “good.” And it was.
However, I would not use the same argument as your second point. I believe that a claim without evidence is as good a worthless. So I would would point to arguments for the existence of God as proof rather than saying, “you can’t disprove there’s a teapot floating in space, so there’s probably a teapot floating in space.” The best argument for God is two versions of the cosmological argument. The teleological argument is good, and if someone’s testimony contains miracles like prophecy, that would also be good. Also, the ontological argument is a pretty solid argument, though it’s not good for convincing people, because the logic it uses it to easy to let bias twist.
I argue that if you have no good evidence for something, it’s as good as a worthless claim. I can accuse you of committing murder, but I have no good evidence for such a claim, making it worthless. So if Christians didn’t have any proof, weak atheists would actually have a good point.
I think what you are describing are problems, not failures. Not sure if that is also a problem with the other thread (I have my biases), but I certainly don’t think “I must drop the argument instantly, it is failed” when I read your responses. I think they are all reasonable responses, but “failure” seems like a final judgement… like the problems you are bringing up are the final word on the subject, not the logical starting point of a debate.
Why are you singling out Christianity? There are lots of different — and often incompatible — monotheistic religions.
The counter to at least part of this is that we don’t have evidence that hundreds of people witnessed Jesus’ resurrection; we only have evidence that a handful of people wrote about witnessing Jesus’ resurrection — but then lots of people have written lots of bullshit over the millennia, so we need actual evidence that these people weren’t lying, mistaken, or being misunderstood — all of which are far more likely.
It is a perfectly clear situation. A claim has been made and matching evidence has been offered. Compare the claim of the resurrection and the evidence presented was not 500 eyewitnesses but a 10 year old child with a history of hallucinations.
The evidence isn’t 500 eyewitnesses; the “evidence” is Paul writing “there were 500 eyewitnesses”. This does not suffice. Much bullshit has been written over the millennia, with many different religious (and non-religious) texts describing many different implausible events.
The more likely explanation is that Paul was lying or mistaken, or that these so-called “eyewitnesses” were lying or mistaken, or that Jesus didn’t actually die, either because he wasn’t actually crucified or because he was rescued and nursed back to health.
Your claim that Paul’s words ought to be taken to be literally true requires extraordinary evidence.