Arguments For God!

Very simply, this page is a list of arguments for God. Some are theistic arguments, some are specific to the Christian God. The arguments are written in alphabetical order, not by how convincing they are as this is primarily subjective. There will too be weak arguments, as the argument for God is cumulative, that is, numerous bits of evidence cumulate to a high likely hood of Christian Theism, even the slightest amount of evidence is still evidence. 

The Popularity Argument:

1.) If God(s) exist, assuming God(s) is not Deist, he would like to get into some sort of relationship with humanity. This relationship may be out of love(for example in Christianity and Judaism), it may be because the God(s) desires things to sustain itself(for example with the Aztecs who used human blood to feed the sun god), et cetera. 

2.) Because the God(s) desire companionship/material(among other possibilities), it would try the best it could to make their religion most popular or among the most popular.

3.) Christianity has a higher probability of being true due to the two other propositions(1.) and 2.)). 

This argument is made as an attack normally to divine hidness; that is, God(s) seem to be hidden/not obvious. As Christianity is the largest religion, it has a higher probability of being true. It is to note that this is in no way an argum ent from Ad Populum. This fallacy is where one asserts their idea is true due to popularity, this is not this argument's claim. The claim is that if a divine being exists, and they are not Deist, it would make sense for this God to promote their religion for reasons mentioned in Proposition 2.). Some have also added this argument when using Pascal's Wager.

The Cosmological Argument(Argument From Motion): 

It is debated who invented this argument — some in fact dating it back to Aristotle — but it was Thomas Aquinas who truly popularized this argument(1); he claimed that there couldn't be an infinite regression of cause and effect without any fixed starting point. In simple terms, the argument claims that everything in motion was placed in motion by something else, so, therefore, must be a first mover aka God. For example, why did the apple fall from the tree? Well because bugs decided to devour the branch it lay upon making the apple fall. The point is that there must be a cause for every effect. 

The Kalam Cosmological Argument:

Introduction:

The Kalam cosmological argument is an argument popularized by the Christian apologist William Lane Craig. This is one of the most common arguments that Theists use to argue for the existence of God. The argument focuses on causation, calling into question what caused the Universe. Theists argue that if the universe did have a beginning, it logically follows that something caused it. The argument has stages 1 and 2. Stage 1 involves arguing that the universe had a beginning and that it had a cause. Following this, in stage 2, the Theist will argue that the universe's cause must be God.

The end goal of this argument is to provide a strong reason to believe that the universe’s beginning was caused by a theistic God.  

The Kalam Cosmological Argument Summarized:  

1. Everything that begins to exist (some add "that is contingent") has a cause

2. The universe began to exist

      Answer: The universe has a cause

Arguments The Universe Began:

Hilbert’s Hotel:

Hilbert’s hotel is a thought experiment designed to show the absurdity of an actual infinite. Participants are asked to imagine a hotel with a finite(noninfinite) number of rooms. If all of the rooms were full when a new resident shows up to book a room they will be turned away. However, if this were a hotel with an infinite number of full rooms, each resident could move up a single room number, creating an open space in room one. But say for a moment that an infinite number of guests arrive, could Hilbert's hotel house them? Paradoxes like these have stumped many philosophers and mathematicians. A hotel like this could never exist, obviously. These sorts of paradoxes, however, are exactly what we would see if we lived in a universe with a finite past.

Scientific Evidence For a Beginning:

Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem:

The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem says that if the universe is expanding along a given worldline, this worldline cannot be infinite to the past. 

The Expansion of The Universe:

The universe is still expanding. We know this because of red and blue shifts in light with distant galaxies. This tells us that these stars and galaxies are moving away from us. If we were to “rewind” the expansion of the universe eventually it would come to a singular point called a singularity. This is a point so small that the laws of physics, and time itself, cease. This is the state that the universe was in prior to the Big Bang. This is a state of nothingness. The universe being eternal simply doesn’t work here because the expansion of the universe can be traced back to a single point of nothingness. 

The Third Law of Thermal Dynamics:

Entropy is a word scientists use to describe the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. Essentially this is used energy. The third Law of thermal dynamics states that the amount of entropy in a system cannot be decreased. If this is the case, and the universe was eternal, the universe would reach something called “Maximum entropy”. This would result in universal heat death. 

The Universe Cannot Stop:

One claim against the finite universe is that at some point time did not exist. According to Dr. Ransom Stephens, someone who has a Ph.D. in Experimental High Energy Physics and a BS in Physics, it is not possible for the universe to stop. As he notes: "It is impossible to accelerate a massive object like you or me up to the speed of light ... you're not massless ... it would require an infinite amount of every, can't happen". Dr. Stephens goes on to say that it would even be impossible for an electron to be able to hit such speeds. An electron weighs 9.1093837 × 10-31 kilograms or 2.00827534 × 10-30 pounds. This is astronomically small.

Dr. Sarah Salvainder, when asked if it was possible that time could stop, answered: "It can if you're made entirely of light." What is obvious is that the universe is not, nor ever was, made out of purely light, but why is this being noted? Very simply, the universe(at the point of a singularity, before the Big Bang exploded) weighed far more than this. If this is so, the universe can not stop. This is significant because it proves the universe began and can not be logically eternal. To further illustrate this point, let's make a graph.

If the universe was eternal(always existed), we run into the issue that we can not make it to the present day. If I told you to go, in a time machine, to an infinite amount of years in the past what would occur? The machine would be incapable of doing so as an infinite sum does not end. If we are to say that something caused the Big Bang, we run into an infinite regress(an infinite series of events) which is impossible. There must be something that began the universe or we are incapable of getting to the present day. The universe is too heavy to exist in a place of no time, so we are unable to use this escape as well. The logical conclusion is the universe must have a beginning, by something that is not bound by the scientific laws we know. 

Works Cited:

(1)Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "cosmological argument". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Sep. 2013, https://www.britannica.com/topic/cosmological-argument. Accessed 5 March 2023. 

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "electron". Encyclopedia Britannica, 9 Jun. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/science/electron. Accessed 3 August 2023.

Cameron, Ross, "Infinite Regress Arguments", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/infinite-regress/>. 

Cartwright, Mark. "Aztec Sacrifice." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 03 May 2018. Web. 22 Apr 2023.

Reichenbach, Bruce. “Cosmological Argument.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 30 June 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/#Bib.

Salvainder, Dr. Sarah. https://twitter.com/sarahsalviander/status/1687301006059581441?t=XytN1x2cJvqUeBvO8aZeUA&s=19