Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?

[SteveII]

No, unlike Zeus, we have evidence that people actually saw him in person, recording his words, performing miracles.

But who saw Jesus? Who? Can you answer this? Because we do not know who really wrote any of the Gospels. There is also no physical evidence of any kind in the case of Jesus. Not a single historian mentions the resurrection until the 3rd and 4th centuries, and then only Christian historians.
Of the anonymous Gospel authors, only "Luke" even claims to be writing history, but neither Luke nor any of the others ever cite any other sources or show signs of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims.

Possibly unknown gospel editor =/= No Jesus. One does not follow from the other. I think it is highly probably that the original editors of the gospels were known to the original recipients (they probably were not mailed anonymously). It is reasonable to see that the person who put his pen to paper was not important--since the documents themselves were prized and referred to in many surviving works from the late first century all the way through until the Council of Nicea. 

Paul was pretty up on the whole resurrection theme and writing about it by 50AD. For the rest, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ea...an_writers. How many on that list do you suppose discuss the resurrection? 

The Thallus reference was about the darkness.

And I told you nobody knows who he was, what he wrote and when he lived. Julian Africanus is said to have disagreed with Thallus because the pagan writer claimed that the darkness mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel was simply an eclipse. Now, it isn't even clear what exactly Thallus actually wrote, what time frame he was referring to, or whether he even mentioned Jesus at all. Neither any of his or Africanus' works survive to check.
Also nobody besides the author of Matthew seems to have noticed this impossible phenomenon - not the Greeks, the Jews, the Persians, the Chinese - not even the other Gospel writers!

Excellent example of how many documents must have been lost to history. Thousands? Tens of Thousands? How many historians' works have survived that were actually alive in the 30s AD? 

You forget that the vast majority of writers were interested in political history (politics, kings, emperors, military, territory).

Really, you don't think that Herod's slaughter of the innocents is not political or in any way worth mentioning? And also they wrote about all sorts of things. I mean do you not know that or are you just lying? There were plenty of writers, both Roman and Jewish, who had great interest in and much to say about the region and its happenings during Jesus' time. We still have many of their writings today: volumes and volumes from scores of writers detailing humdrum events and lesser exploits of much more mundane figures in Roman Palestine, including several failed Jewish messiahs.
Take Seneca the Younger (that lived at the exact time), he was regarded as the greatest Roman writer on ethics he has nothing to say about arguably the biggest ethical shakeup of his time. in his book on nature "Quaestiones Naturales", he records eclipses and other unusual natural phenomena, but makes no mention of the miraculous Star of Bethlehem, the multiple earthquakes in Jerusalem after Jesus' death, or the worldwide darkness at Christ's crucifixion that he himself should have witnessed. In another book "On Superstition", Seneca lambastes every known religion, including Judaism. But strangely, he makes no mention whatsoever of Christianity, which was supposedly spreading like wildfire across the empire.

Not to mention that Seneca's older brother, Junius Annaeus Gallio, actually appears in the Bible. It's curious that Gallio never seems to have told his brother about this amazing Jesus character that everyone was so excited about, since Seneca was very interested in just this sort of thing.

How many babies would have been killed? How do you imagine it worked: the parents brought their babies to the market square in the middle of the day and received a receipt? Do you think the order was filed in the drawer called "atrocities we might not want people to know about". Regardless, it was certainly not an international story and what Jewish period writing from that time has survived? Josephus didn't write until 75 years after the alleged event--with a war in between. 

In the first century, they were not interested in what they saw as an offshoot of a minority religion in a region that would soon be crushed and dispersed.

Only if you take that the Gospels are a lie because they all insist that Jesus was renowned not just throughout all Jerusalem but the entire region of Palestine, the Decapolis and Syria. If you add the book of Acts, then Jesus' fame supposedly quickly spreads to Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Rome and still further, throughout the Mediterranean world. Add wide-reaching political events and spectacular, unprecedented miracles allegedly witnessed by multitudes on top of that, and the lack of corroboration for the Gospels and Acts is a serious problem.

No, not a problem at all. How many documents authored during the time in question have survived? Additionally, Christianity was considered a Jewish offshoot, so anyone not interested in the actual details, would have dismissed it as nothing new or of little interest. 

Are you denying that Josephus ever mentioned Jesus (which was my point)? If so, you are in the very small minority.

I am in minority? So can you name me few historians that take this seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_o...es_passage

The Talmud later talks of Jesus being an evil sorcerer.

The account of various figures called Jesus in the Jewish scriptures is a convoluted mess. The name of Jesus of Nazareth never appears until the last layers of Jewish Rabbinic literature in the 6th or 7th century. Or is it your Jesus? He is confused with earlier figures of Jesus Pandira (mid 1st century B.C.E.) and Jesus ben Stada (2nd century C.E.), has connections with the government and is criticized for strange behavior like burning his food in public.

You say "convoluted mess" because it makes your argument seem stronger. No, it is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_t...references

Are you throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks? There are tons of articles that examine every point you think you make by bring these things up. Pick one with some links if you want to discuss them separately.

So you don't think it's suspicious that nobody ever chronicled Herod’s slaughter of the innocents?

You can't possibly know that. All you can say is that our of the miniscule fraction of period-written documents that survived, there is not one that corroborates the story. 

You have obviously never been out in a boat on a large lake in a storm.

That's just it, it is a small, river-fed lake at the foot of the mountain in Galilee near the city Tiberias, a lake easily traversed in small canoes in no more than two hours and insufficiently capacious for waves or storms. Not to mention Mark's remark of nine-hour journey to find his disciples sailing on the pond.
But that is if the Sea of Galilee was that lake because Mark has Jesus, on one of his nautical adventures, disembarking on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in what he describes as "the country of the Gerasenes," but Gerasa was more than 30 miles from the shore. - and that doesn't bother you?

I have been to Galilee. It is way bigger than the bay I sail on and that bay can easily generate 4 foot waves. It is all about the magnitude, and timing of the waves--all you need for that is a couple miles of fetch. 13 miles x 8 miles is plenty to create dangerous conditions. This is a stupid line of 

What is your theory?

That Jesus never existed, like for instance king Arthur or Hercules.

So, how did all the evidence of the NT and the churches come about?

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But it does when used in the social sciences! It assigns evolutionary theories by fiat (certainly not with any kind of proof) to questions like "how did religion evolve?", "how did morality evolve", etc. when a theistic worldview has very different answers to those questions.

Except that the scientific answers to those questions are not truth claims.They are the best models of reality given all available evidence. They are NOT advanced by fiat (scientists would laugh at that claim), they are ALWAYS advanced provisionally, not dogmatically.  [1] 

Problem with the answers given by the theistic worldview, they can't be tested. [2] 

As Brian37 says, if a scientist in any country, culture and/or religion does an experiment to find the speed of light, they will all get the same answer.

Ask them to answer those other questions you mention, and you will get different answers, depending on whether they are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Zoroastrian, etc, etc.

And here us atheists are, with no way to test to see who is right, if anyone.

1. I would say that questions like "how did religion evolve" and "how did morality evolve" cannot have scientific answers -- because nothing that resembles the scientific method can be applied to them. So, theories are advanced that, at best, are plausible. That is a very low standard. 
2. No, they really can't -- just like the naturalistic theories.