Just noting that usually nobody is pretending to give God advice the way you said. These are plausibility arguments, and they can also be phrased as: “If there were a God, we wouldn’t expect the world to look like this or that.” Say, for example, that the Earth wouldn’t be in such a marginal location, or that fossils in the geological layers wouldn’t show us that life arose through some event of abiogenesis rather than man appearing fully formed.
In short, there’s no need to be dismissive. These are legitimate arguments, and the rational thing to do is to take them seriously even if you think they’re ultimately mistaken simply because they are mistaken. (I’m an atheist and I agree that most of them are like that, but at the same time I think arguments like these are rare in serious discussions.)

What he means to say is that what you would expect does not obligate Him. If I have reached the conclusion that there is a God, then the fact that He acts in a way I do not understand should not refute my conclusion. I’ve explained this more than once through the parable of the broken clock (you can search the site). In a cynical formulation he said they shouldn’t be giving Him advice.

Even if we assume that we’ve reached the conclusion that there is a God, the fact that the world is full of phenomena that look to us “broken” is not just a meaningless anecdote.
Like in science, when reality repeatedly behaves in a way that doesn’t fit the way we described God (all-good, all-powerful, rational, loving, etc.), that is not merely “our lack of understanding,” but raw material that ought to weaken confidence in the thesis.
The broken-clock analogy is misleading, because the design of clocks by imperfect human beings is completely different from positing the existence of a perfect God. A broken clock does not contradict a human designer, but a very “broken” world really is a serious difficulty for the conception of a perfect God. To use the good in the world as evidence for God, and everything that doesn’t fit as a “divine mystery”—that’s an asymmetry that removes faith from the realm of truth and falsehood open to rational discussion, and turns it into a position immune to evidence.

I didn’t say it’s a meaningless anecdote. I said that if I have good reasons to believe, you’ll need to bring stronger arguments than these for me to give up that belief. He is good and all-powerful and rational, and there is nothing in what was brought in the question to undermine that. These really are among the weaker claims I’ve heard against belief. Here it might indeed have been appropriate to say that this is a meaningless anecdote, as distinct from other claims that are stronger.

And regarding immunity to evidence—not true. It’s just that this evidence is very weak. Beyond that, the claim that there is no God is also immune to evidence or refutation. The discussion of belief in God is not scientific.

Michi, you say the claims I brought are among the weakest, but you don’t explain what exactly is weak about them. To claim that something is weak without showing why it is weak is not an answer. It’s a declaration.

My point wasn’t to represent the whole critique of theism, but to ask a simple question: how do you decide that a certain piece of evidence is weak? On that I got no reasoning at all. Just the statement that this is a weak claim. That doesn’t answer the question.

You also present God as good, all-powerful, and rational, and then determine that there is nothing in what I presented to undermine that. But that assumes the conclusion. If from the outset you assume that God is good, then all suffering in the world will automatically be defined as non-undermining—without explaining what would undermine it.

As for the remark about atheism, there is a clear problem here. Atheism can in fact be undermined by evidence. If an empirical revelation were to occur, consistent miracles that could be tested, or a clearly non-human source of information, that would be evidence that immediately undermines it. So it is not correct to say that this position too is immune. It isn’t.

For your claim about weak evidence to be serious and not a slogan, you need to explain what the strong evidence in favor is, how it is weighed against the evidence against, and what criterion distinguishes evidence that undermines from evidence that does not. Until the criterion is presented, the words weak evidence and strong evidence are just labels you attach to what is convenient for you.

“The discussion about God is not scientific” [?!] Most of your inferences about God come from phenomena in the world, from laws, order, and complexity. That means you are using reality as support; otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about strong evidence and weak evidence.

If the world of phenomena can strengthen belief, it can also weaken it. But you apply two different standards. When the world behaves in a way that seems orderly and rational to you, you use that as justification for a good and rational God. When that same world presents pointless suffering, randomness, and total hiddenness, suddenly it no longer belongs to the discussion, because the discussion is not scientific.

You can’t hold both principles at the same time. If reality can say something about God, it can also say something against Him. And if reality can say nothing, then you can’t infer from it to an all-powerful and rational God in the first place.

At the moment it looks like a situation in which the evidence in favor is counted, and the evidence against is not relevant. That is not weighing evidence. It is simply a prior decision not to allow anything to undermine.

Strange arguments. Somebody raises weak claims. He doesn’t need to show why they are strong. And I have to prove that they are weak. In my world, the questioner has to bear the burden of proof. Beyond that, some things are self-evident. You claim that He shouldn’t care about separating meat and milk, while he claims that He does care. Does that strike you as serious? It’s almost insulting even to think about explaining it. My arguments for belief are presented well in books and articles, and I very much hope you don’t expect me to post a book on the subject here. Especially in response to the flimsy claims raised here, which aren’t worth even a page.
In short, the discussion is exhausted.

Just one more “scientific” comment. Your claim about being open to refutation or evidence also applies to fairies. If a fairy is discovered, that would be evidence of its existence. When people talk about a falsifying experiment, they mean a human apparatus of experiment conducted on our initiative, not waiting for the Holy One, blessed be He, to be so kind as to reveal Himself (by the way, He already has. You probably expect a personal revelation. I’ll let Him know when I get the chance).

My point was not to refute your belief and not to demand that you reopen a whole book. The point was to understand what criterion distinguishes, for you, between strong evidence and weak evidence. On that I got no answer. A declaration that the things I asked about are “weak” is not enough if you use that same reality to ground belief in the first place.

The burden of proof is relevant when someone makes a positive claim. I did not claim that there is no God. I asked a simple epistemic question: how do you decide what counts as an undermining challenge? If you are unwilling to specify even a theoretical scenario that could undermine it, it is hard to see how your belief rests on evidence rather than on a commitment that is not open to criticism.

As for fairies, that is exactly what sharpens the difficulty. You yourself write that if a fairy were discovered, that would be evidence. In other words, a natural and empirical position can indeed be refuted. With atheism it’s the same principle. If there were a verified revelation or non-human information that could be tested, atheism would be undermined. Therefore the claim that this position is immune is incorrect.

If you use the world as support for belief, it is equally reasonable to use the world as criticism of it. If you say the discussion is not scientific, then you also cannot use evidence from the world in favor of belief. Right now it looks like a situation in which everything that supports is relevant, and everything that contradicts is defined in advance as beside the point. That is not a method of weighing evidence but of filtering in advance.

If as far as you are concerned the discussion is exhausted, that is of course legitimate. But it is important to say that the questions raised here were not answered; they were classified. And that is a significant difference.

When there are questions, I can try to answer them. So far I haven’t seen any.
I see neither any need nor any possibility of giving a general definition of the strength and weakness of evidence. Are you expecting a general treatise here on all kinds of evidence? That’s evasive nonsense. Moreover, as stated, you did not explain why in your view these flimsy arguments are strong evidence worthy of a response, but for some reason you demand from me a comprehensive treatise to answer your non-questions.
I did not say that because when we see a fairy we will get evidence, therefore this counts as falsifiability. If Elijah the Prophet were to appear and tell me there is no God, or Moses our Teacher were to rise from the dead and say there was no revelation at Mount Sinai, that too would be not bad evidence. All these are “experiments” not in our hands, and therefore they do not meet the criterion of falsifiability. I already wrote that too, and for some reason you ignored it.
Indeed, now is the time to end.

Michi, the problem here is not the strength of the claims but the inconsistency in the way you judge evidence.
When something fits your conclusion, it counts as evidence; when something challenges it, it gets defined as “weak,” “not scientific,” or “self-evident.”
In that situation, this is not a judgment of evidence but a prior definition of the result.

I also did not ask for a “treatise” on all kinds of evidence, but for something much simpler:
What is your criterion for distinguishing between evidence that creates a real difficulty and evidence that does not?
You did not answer that. Saying something is “flimsy” explains nothing.

There is also an internal contradiction here regarding refutation: on the one hand you write that a fairy, Elijah, or Moses rising and saying otherwise would be evidence; on the other hand you dismiss them as “not in our hands,” and therefore not relevant.
If there are scenarios that undermine, then belief is not immune.
If every undermining scenario is removed from the game, then this is not evidence-based belief but a position that cannot be harmed by the world.

That is my whole point:
You cannot use reality to strengthen belief and at the same time exempt that same reality when it poses a difficulty.
It simply isn’t consistent.

You’re dragging me into this, so here is the opposite interpretation: you claim that I dismiss evidence because of a prior position, but I claim that what supports direction A is weak, and therefore my position is in direction B. The order is the reverse. That’s it. If you keep repeating yourself any more, I won’t answer, God willing.

It’s clear to me that from your perspective the discussion has run its course, but it is important to me to sharpen the endpoint:

I did not ask you for a “treatise” or a list of all the evidence in the world, but for one simple thing:
What is the criterion by which you decide that certain evidence raises a real difficulty, while other evidence is “weak” or “flimsy”?

The statement that the order is “reversed” is not an answer to that question.
Nor does the claim that the evidence in direction A is “weak” stand on its own without an explanation of why it is weak.

I understand that it’s uncomfortable to get into this, and that’s legitimate.
But without a general criterion, even a rough or principled one, the judgment of evidence comes out position-dependent rather than content-dependent, and that is exactly what I was trying to clarify.

In any case, thank you for your time and for the conversation. As far as I’m concerned, that is all I wanted to make clear.