How much pain can atheists withstand ?

[The End of Atheism]

Analogical arguments don't prove or demonstrate things.  They are useful for illustration or pedagogy, nothing more. 

I don't think this is true. Sure, people use analogies in common parlance to do just that : pedagogy and explaining things. But in philosophy, analogical reasoning reportedly plays an important role

Quote : "Analogical reasoning is fundamental to human thought and, arguably, to some nonhuman animals as well. Historically, analogical reasoning has played an important, but sometimes mysterious, role in a wide range of problem-solving contexts. The explicit use of analogical arguments, since antiquity, has been a distinctive feature of scientific, philosophical and legal reasoning."

In the same link above there is an entire section about justifications of analogical reasoning, but I can't really pretend I understand what's in there. I need some time to work out a full answer

The general consensus is that the argument from design is unsuccessful, for numerous reasons that we can get into if you like. 

What I know is that the argument of design has many variants. But I don't agree that even the oldest ones are unsuccessful. Even Hume in his dialogues ended up conceding that the argument of design does resolve into some vague theism (google Plato's reversal or just read the last paragraph in the dialogues). So the analogy of design does have plausibility.

In modern times they say darwin killed the argument from design, but from the bit of research I did this is also a big mistake : people who claim darwinism is bad for theism assume that they are two competing explanations (proving one disproves the other or makes it less plausible etc), but this is only a claim

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