The Existence of God
Arguments for Belief in the Maximally Great Being
Arguments for the Existence of God
According to Reasonable Faith, a major Christian philosophy and apologetics organization,
God is the extremely powerful uncaused necessarily existing non-contingent non-physical immaterial eternal being who created the entire universe and everything in it.
We can examine six major arguments for the existence of God.
The cosmological argument. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Modern astronomy and astrophysics show the universe began to exist. (See The Creation of the Universe in the pull-down menu for Apologetic Themes.) Therefore the universe has a cause. The cause for the existence of the universe cannot be part of the universe. It must be beyond space and time, transcendent, immaterial, and unimaginably powerful. The cause must have the power of spontaneous choice, meaning it can choose to cause something and has the power to bring it about. That implies the cause must be a personal creator.
The design argument. Modern physics shows the configuration of the universe is determined by the fundamental constants and quantities of nature. The values of those constants and quantities fall within extremely narrow life permitting ranges. If the fundamental constants and quantities were off by even an extremely small amount, the universe would have no inhabitable worlds. In other words, the universe exhibits fine tuning. The design explanation is the only viable explanation for the fine tuning of the universe. That implies the existence of an unimaginably powerful and intelligent being who designed the physical universe and brought it into existence.
The mathematical argument. We live in an ordered universe that is subject to precise mathematical laws. The physical laws of classical mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and relativity are all expressed as mathematical equations. Mathematics applies so well to physics because God designed and built the universe according to a mathematical plan He had in mind. It is more reasonable to believe the universe was designed by God according to a mathematical plan than to believe otherwise.
The contingency argument. The contingency argument tries to answer the fundamental question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. Since by His very nature God cannot have a cause, the explanation of His existence lies in the necessity of His own nature.
The moral argument. We know intuitively that good, bad, right, and wrong exist. Our moral experience convinces us that moral values are objectively real. Without God, there is no foundation for the moral realities that we all experience. The existence of objective morality points to the existence of God.
The ontological argument. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being must exist in some possible world. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, it must exist in every possible world. Otherwise it would not be a maximally great being. Therefore if it is even possible that a maximally great being (God) exists, a maximally great being must exist in the actual world. The only way to invalidate this argument is to prove it is impossible for a maximally great being to exist.
I encourage you to watch some enlightening videos prepared by the Reasonable Faith organization. The videos are available at the links below.