For millennia, people have tried to formulate arguments to prove that God exists. Some arguments have fallen by the wayside, but others have been honed by centuries of discussion, updated by the latests scientific discoveries, and are still discussed today. Here are some of the best.
The universe exists, but how can we explain this? What caused it? The cosmological argument argues that the universe could not cause itself or explain its own existence; neither could it have had an infinite life. The only logical conclusion, it is argued, is that it must, like everything else we know, have an external cause, and this external cause looks like God. The counter arguments try to show that an infinite or causeless universe is possible.
The shape and characteristics of our universe are determined by a bunch of fundamental universal laws and the values of constants within those laws. Cosmologists have calculated that if these values had been even slightly different, life could not have formed and perhaps the universe would not exist at all after this time, or would be more like soup than the galaxies that we see. This argument looks at possible explanations to explain this 'fine-tuning', and concludes that the universe must have been designed. The counter arguments try to offer alternative explanations (e.g. that perhaps the underlying physics made our universe inevitable) or try to undermine the calculations of the improbability of our universe occurring by chance.
The moral argument
The argument from reason
The ontological argument
The argument from religious experience and miracles
The argument from the historical Jesus
The argument (against the existence of God) from evil
Few people these days see these arguments as proofs, and few who oppose them see their counter arguments as disproofs. Instead, we may hope that the arguments show that one or the other view about God is reasonable, and hopefully more reasonable than the alternative view. If several arguments point in the same direction, the probability increases that their cumulative conclusion is correct.
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