Arguments for God's existance

[Russell_SA]

As an atheist,
It comes down to who you are and what it takes for you, personally to change beliefs. You either believe or you don’t. There is no middle road between the two. You can hold beliefs in varying degrees but you can not hold simultaneously believe X about something and disbelieve X about the exact same thing. Just like someone can not be both guilty and innocent, married and a bachelor, etc.
Logical arguments for something that can not be investigated to falsify the conclusions just points you on the best path of where to go investigate the logical conclusions you’ve made based on the current understanding of reality. Logic is just the vocabulary for describing predictability of this experienced reality. But since we have not investigate all aspects of reality, our logic can be correct, but then we could still be factually wrong. It’s the investigation that brings something into existence, not logic. Again, logic is just based on reality after you’ve investigated it. A does not equal B since we have never experienced this happening. That is where these logical conclusions come from. It’s just math. Math is just the adjectives we use to make predictions about reality that we have already investigated.
So the first cause argument - All it does is point out that logically there must be a beginning, necessary, event that started of reality due to the infinite regression paradox. However, it does not imply anything more about this first cause. Also, since we can not investigate this, it’s just mental masturbation since, again, we can be logically correct and still factually wrong about reality because we can not actually investigate reality to this point yet.
The rest of the arguments all seem to be just god of the gaps arguments. So if this works for you to come to believe in a deity, fine, that works for you. But it doesn’t for everyone. Your deity should know what it takes for every atheist to become believers and either is choosing not to or can not do so. Either way, not our problem since we can not go investigate that realm independently.

 

[KJW5551]

“There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.” -Aquinas

This seems to hold up pretty well in my mind some 750 years after Aquinas penned it. Which is more likely, that God created the universe, or that the universe created itself (which violates laws of natural science as we understand them)?

Combine that with the historical reality of Jesus Christ and you have some strong evidence in my opinion.

 

[tafan2]

So the first cause argument - All it does is point out that logically there must be a beginning, necessary, event that started of reality due to the infinite regression paradox. However, it does not imply anything more about this first cause. Also, since we can not investigate this, it’s just mental masturbation since, again, we can be logically correct and still factually wrong about reality because we can not actually investigate reality to this point yet.

The first cause argument certainly implies more about God. One only has to go to the very next set of questions which Aquinas posed in his Summa “The Simplicity of God” (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The simplicity of God (Prima Pars, Q. 3)).
Do not think the Aquinas stopped after his 5 proofs.