A simple challenge for atheists

[Esquilax]

Sure, all these truth claims are a matter of opinion until you rise from the dead after a brutal crucifixion. That tends to lend weight to your truth claims over others. Of course if you don't believe the resurrection really happened, than all of your points are logical and valid.

So, to start with, all you've essentially said here is that if you're right about your religion, then your religion is right. That's just a tautology.

Besides, with no evidence of the resurrection to speak of, nor any secondary witnesses to that claim outside of the bible itself, it's not exactly the concrete historical event you seem to want to characterize it as.

Whenever my atheist friends propose that unicorns, Boo the Giant Miniature Space Hamster, or whatever can be substituted for God in the philosophical arguments for God, you are missing a key point. When you tease out the premises, you see that a description of God forms.

God would have to:
1. Transcend time and space
2. To avoid infinite regression, just be metaphysically necessary
3. Omnipotent
4. Be non-physical
5. Have a mind (consciousness, purpose, etc.)

And one can simply assert that Boo has all of those qualities. Which is secondary to the main obstacle you have, which is that we have no evidence that any combination of those qualities, and even some of them individually, are even possible, which is a huge part of determining whether a belief is rational or not. Obviously, it isn't rational to believe that impossible things are real, so that's kind of a huge hurdle for you right there.

So, you cannot substitute just "anything" into the argument. That "anything" would take on all these characteristics and just be another name for God.

And you don't think it's a little dishonest of you to list generic characteristics for a deistic god in order to co-opt any alternative we propose (alternatives, I might add, that are rhetorical in nature, designed to show just how unjustified your own beliefs are) while you actually believe in a specific christian god that has more characteristics than just that basic set, of which our hypothetical alternatives can differ and wouldn't just be another name for your god specifically?