In my opinion, the strongest argument against God is probably the existence of evil. After that, I think the argument from the existence of non-resistant non-believers (divine hiddenness) is intriguing. But I realized not too long ago that there is something very important to notice about them. They share a characteristic which in a very curious way almost seems to paradoxically strengthen the case for God. They both share the trait of not being arguments against God per se, but against a specific conception of God–like the Christian one.

Regarding the argument from the existence of evil, I have noted this before when asking what the problem of evil achieves. The argument from the problem of evil seems to be aimed at making a certain conception of God (all good, all powerful, all knowing) less probable but not aimed at the existence of a “lesser” being or merely some kind of first cause or unmoved mover. Similarly with the argument from divine hiddenness, the argument is specifically targeting a perfectly loving God. It is not aimed at taking down theism in general.

This is very interesting to me. I think it should be more interesting to more people. Two of the strongest arguments against God are not actually against God. And if the best objections to God don’t actually put a dent in the case for mere theism, I’d be a little bothered by that if I were an atheist.