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I like your opinion of these arguments. I’ve never heard of them convincing anyone, and pretending that they will probably just turns people off even more. A couple of posts back I started with the Prime Mover argument, because I really have seen it used as an attempted “checkmate” against disbelief. Other arguments (like the almost painful ontological argument) are more of a side thought now, and I also haven’t really seen people trying to defend them to any great degree.

And for that matter, you might argue that God said he refused to be tested and that faith was vital (sorry, I don’t recall the exact phrasing). Allowing any kind of logical proof of his existence would constitute removing the need for faith. So were he omniscient and omnipotent, he would not provide such ways to deduce him. Finding a proof of god would seem at once to prove and disprove him.

The point I hope to get across is that math is elegant and sound, the way your beliefs should be structured. Math makes very few assumptions, and is completely self consistent. Branches of science build on math by saying “We have this element we call a ‘number’. If we can make a parallel between the ‘number’ and the thing we see, we can use math’s real results to predict real consequences.” It’s good to point out the disparity between how people formulate beliefs.

If someone believes in God, but doesn’t claim to be able to prove it, or “know it for a fact,” I have much less of a problem with that. There are all kinds of beliefs, but leave the ‘proofs’ to things which actually apply to being proved.

In short, yes I agree with you :) We just can’t let these arguments go unchecked – they don’t belong.

I hate this argument.

In the first place, it is not deductive. Second, if true, it only describes a concept, not a being. Third, it annoys the hell out of everyone who hears it. I have never heard a single theist in the modern era defend, use, or praise it.

Every theist has her own reasons for believing, and typically they include experiential reasons. I believe in God, but not solely on the basis of deductive reasoning. I view the so-called rational arguments for God as things for believers to marvel at, and for non-believers to puzzle over, rather than as “conversion tools.” In other words, they are intellectual exercises.

That said… my favorite argument is outlined in my post on the First Cause, or “the Uncaused Cause.” From my limited reading of Aquinas’ own words, I think I take it a little further in order to solve the contradiction of “nothing can be its own first cause” and “God is his own first cause.”

There are criticisms to this argument. Some of them I identified myself in the post, and others are in the comments. And it also tells us very little about the qualities of the Uncaused Cause: does it necessarily follow that it is all-good, all-knowing, or full of love? Does it follow that it is identical to the Christian God? It’s not meant to make any atheist or agnostic say, “Oh, that makes sense, guess I suddenly believe in God now!” It’s only food for thought.

So really — I don’t get the use of mathematical style proofs in trying to prove the existence of god. To me it’s like trying to prove the existence of Spiderman. Doesn’t apply. God is simply a silly childish concept.