There are many different arguments for the existence of a God or a theistic creator, stemming from ontology, teleology, deontology, contingency, and an imperative need to make sense of the human perspective. Among these “proofs” presented for the existence of god, there are plenty of quite compelling and interesting arguments that I’ll make sense of in this article.
Note that a refutation against one, two, or all three arguments presented is by no means a refutation against religion itself, only against pragmatic attempts to prove the existence of a religion. These arguments also cannot narrow the scope of “proof” to only a specific God or interpretation of a god, and are therefore completely applicable to any faith that assumes the notion of an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing (omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient) creator. Many of these arguments stem from Christian apologetics; most have been discussed in detail by theologians and philosophers and, subsequently, have been popularized by those seeking to defend the Christian faith. I will also provide less intricate and fleshed-out responses to each of these that should be easily comprehensible to an average middle school student.
Kalam Cosmological Argument
The Kalam Cosmological Argument, popularized by William Lane Craig but adopted from medieval Islamic scholars (hence the name “Kalam”), is an a posteriori argument that aims to prove the existence of God through the principle of sufficient reason. This is very similar to the contingency argument (or rather the argument from contingency); the two arguments differ based on the fact that the Kalam Cosmological Argument assumes a finite cosmos bound by the restraints of time, such that everything that begins to exist must have a cause, whereas the Argument from Contingency simply reasons that everything existence thing must have a reason or explanation for its existence. The Kalam cosmological argument goes as follows.
Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. (Premise I)
The universe began to exist. (Premise 2)
Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. (Premise 3)
No scientific explanation (in terms of physical laws and initial conditions of the universe) can provide a causal account of the origin (very beginning) of the universe, since such are part of the universe. (Premise 4)
Therefore, the cause must be personal (explanation is given in terms of a non-natural, personal agent) (Conclusion)
There are quite a few issues with this variation of Aquinas’s cosmological argument, responses that apply to many arguments involving first-cause, first-mover, or contingency.
There isn’t any justification within causation. Natural scientific laws and principles can’t explain anything outside the scope of the universe, as they completely focus on phenomena within the universe—that’s a great play by Craig. Unfortunately, that exact same self-referential incoherence can be applied to the laws of time that his entire argument depends on, as the Kalam Cosmological argument assumes whatever begins to exist must have a preceding cause. That assumes that time, a property of the known universe, also has always existed before the universe began; you have just as much reason to doubt the assumption that time precedes the universe as you have to doubt the assumption that scientific universals precede the universe.
Similar to the first-mover argument (and contingency argument), the Cosmological Argument, many presuppose that the universe is a single event in a linear chain of progression. There’s absolutely no ramification for that claim within these a posteriori proofs—the universe can be eternal, just because having “turtles all the way down”, to quote Stephen Hawking, doesn’t “feel” or “sit” right with someone, doesn’t mean they have reasonable suspicion to doubt that. You would have to prove that the universe is not eternal first.
The most obvious critique of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is that it fails to prove the existence of a God at all! Proving that something must have created the universe doesn’t prove that a “Christian God”, “Muslim God”, or any interpretation of an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing God, for that matter. From a Bayesian perspective, the Principle of Insufficient Reason tells us that if there’s no evidence as to why some cause m is more likely than the others, the likelihood of all causes is the exact same, with each one being as probable as 1/n, n representing the number of causes there can be. So the universe being created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster is equally likely as it being created by any specific religious interpretation of God.
The Moral Argument
The Moral Argument for the existence of God has been popularized by a plethora of notable and influential theologians, most notably C.S. Lewis’s 1952 book Mere Christianity. Also sometimes known as the Axiological Argument, the Moral Argument for the existence of God. Despite there being an entire family of theological arguments relying on morality, this specific Inductive Moral Argument has been popularized by more contemporary scholars, though its fundamental structure as a probabilistic syllogism remains identical to those used in other Moral Arguments. Probably one of the most simplistic arguments you can possibly make.
Humans possess objective moral knowledge. (Premise 1)
Probably, if God does not exist, humans would not possess objective moral knowledge. (Premise 2)
Probably, God exists. (Conclusion)
Luckily for those with a less technical understanding of argumentation (like me), this argument can be attacked head-on through clash with its fundamental premises, specifically premise 1, which claims that morality is completely objective.
Moral relativism. Morality is relative, shaped by social systems, psychology, and culture. Interpretations of actions such as slavery and women’s rights have completely changed in just the past 200 years alone; this, combined with differing explications of biblical text and scripture of practically any major religion throughout centuries, presents a compelling objection in the form of moral relativism. Even faced with the amount of cultural diffusion and exchange humanity has experienced within the past millennia, there are still nonfoundational moral variances between different cultural groups.
Humans cannot be sure that the moral foundations they take as objective are objective or universal. The argument escalates from “humans believe they have objective moral beliefs”, to “the possibility that objective moral beliefs exist is likely”, to “therefore probably God”. There is a ton of probabilistic mitigation that occurs through every one of these leaps in logic. This isn’t intended as a complete, comprehensive refutation, but it’s able to poke some holes in the moral argument.
Evolutionary cognition. This actually synergizes with moral relativism extremely well, being argumentatively intertwined. Evolutionarily, humans have evolved to penalize behaviors that are negative, which can explain the adoption of so-called moral “universals”, such as murder being wrong. Why would murder be wrong? Because it’s disadvantageous to kill off another fellow human being. Why would stealing be wrong? Because it violates reciprocal altruism, where humans are inclined only to assist one another when they’ll get something in return, whether that’s a favor or even social validation. As a social species, a tribe of thieves would not be able to evolve into an organized, rule-bound, and functioning society—let alone compete with for survival.
Anselm’s Ontological Argument
The first ever Ontological Argument for the existence of God was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in his 11th century work Proslogion. He gave birth to a branch of arguments that attempt to prove the existence of God through pure reason alone, arguments which are completely analytic and rely on ontological (existent) values to reach the conclusion that “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived” must “exist”. It is significantly easier for one approaching this argument to dismiss it as wrong than to point out where the wrongness actually lies—that requires a deeper understanding of how the premises interact as a whole; this is mainly a result of Anselm avoiding informal errors which can lead to premises being disproved individually, hence the fact that most critiques of Ontological Arguments consist of pointing out formal errors such as affirming the consequent. Go take a look at the argument yourself.
I conceive of a being than which no greater can be conceived. (Premise 1)
If a being than which no greater can be conceived does not exist, then I can conceive of a being greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived that exists. (Premise 2)
I cannot conceive of a being greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. (Premise 3 )
Hence, a being than which no greater can be conceived exists. (Conclusion)
Here are 5 really concise critiques of Anselm’s Ontological Argument, the last 2 of which are critiques made by me. There is no logical flow or synergy between these arguments; some of them even directly contradict each other. Fortunately, each response can take out the Ontological Argument entirely—there is simply no need to deploy more than one of these in theistic discussion.
Existence is not a predicate. Kant argues that, since predicates are values or attributes added to objects or concepts, the existence of those objects or concepts cannot be used as a predicate. If an egg tart has the property of being custardy, flaky, and sweet, its existence only allows it to even access those properties in the first place, rather than being one of those properties. In essence, each of these individual predicates should be contingent while the object retains its other unique identifiers (properties). You can have an egg tart that’s salty and not sweet; you can have a stale egg tart that isn’t flaky; you can also have an egg tart with barely any egg yolk to remove its custardy texture. In this case, it is still an object that is discernible as an egg tart—that’s not the case with existence. If it had no property of existence, it would be nothing. So no, existence cannot be a predicate, and Anselm cannot use it in his list of “godly values”.
The entire argument is circular. Let’s say, hypothetically, that I wanted to prove that a creature called a zarp exists—a zarp is a creature that must exist to be a zarp, therefore a zarp must exist. This is an easy way to spot a formal error in logic that Anselm is making; circular reasoning is arguably the most common form of a formal fallacy there is.
Modal critique. You can apply symmetrical modal logic to Anselm’s argument; you can also conceive of a world in which the greatest conceivable being doesn’t exist. Anselm needs to prove that his “greatest conceivable being” is a necessary being, meaning it must exist in every possible world. It’s completely possible, though, to envision a world in which that being does not exist and only exists conceptually, thereby refuting Anselm’s claim.
Existence is a scalar predicate, but Anselm treats it as a binary and as a scalar predicate at the same time, contradicting the term itself. Anselm relies on existence being a value with maximums and minimums ranging through different levels of existence, such as physical and abstract. Within premise 2, he uses existence as a true/false value or a binary, while the entire point of a value with maximums and minimums is that it has some tendency to be scalar—something I believe existence is part of, though logically it is usually viewed otherwise. Anselm has to rely on having two contradicting equivocations of existence to prove his point. This explanation is harder for the average layperson to comprehend properly; that lies within my own incapacity to elucidate this argument, but you will find an actual explanation of this argument from one of my first posts here. (It uses very idiosyncratic terminology; replace “predicate” with “scalar predicate/gradable attribute and “proposition” with “binary”).
Comparing ontological values with having value conflates 2 understandings of what value is. Having a value, as in an attribute or quality, is different from having value as in worth; worth is entirely subjective and depends on interactivity between different entities—that’s impossible to quantify or evaluate purely ontologically. So, having values doesn’t give the “greatest conceivable being” value; those are two different meanings of the same word.
If you have anything to say, comment. I respond to every single comment I get.
I’ve only covered 3 out of many very compelling and interesting arguments for God in this article. There are dozens more arguments—some more compelling, some less compelling than the ones I detailed here, each with dozens of its own variations. I highly advise you to make your own refutations to my refutations of these arguments, as well as refuting the same refutations you might make. Arguments that require more in-depth and technical refutations, such as Fine Tuning and the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, might have entire articles dedicated to simply explaining them. There are countless other fascinating arguments for God that are yet to be constructed!
Let me know if you want an article defending any specific argument for God—I’d love to dabble in some apologetics for future articles! :)
Further reading + sources! (basically just SEP)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/
I wouldn't categorize Anselm's argument as even remotely "convincing," but nice article buddy :3
i get my nutrients from eating alligators and frogs