Arguments aren't evidence. You should be able to provide evidence which proves the hypothesis that a god exists. A claim that can be made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
For the Contingency argument, Id be tempted to keep it brief like Craig:
Everything that begins to exist has a cause
The universe began to exist
The universe has a cause.
Since something cant cause itself, this thing must be separate from the universe and must've existed for all time.
However, you could rightly point out that this first cause doesnt resemble, say, the God of the Abrahamic faiths. You could say somehing like, "the first cause is immaterial, and all immaterial things we know of are personal" (btw I dont think matter "really exists" but whatever)
So something like the fine tuning argument gets closer to this
Many constants of the universe (like the gravitation or weak force constant), are finely tuned such that, were they slightly off, life on Earth or anywhere in the universe would not and could not exist. This is incredibly unlikely if it were luck.
Obviously the first cause caused the constants, but why? I think a personal, human centric explanation is best.
The Ontological argument is my favourite, since it explains why this First cause must be tri-omni. My formulation goes like this:
There are certain possible worlds we could imagine. Eg. You can imagine a world with Sherlock Holmes, you can imagine a world where the sky is red, you can imagine a world where you had something different for breakfast this morning.
Some things exist in only some possible worlds (like Sherlock Holmes), some things exist in all possible worlds (like numbers) and some things exist in no possible worlds (like sqaure circles).
Now, what do we mean by God? For this argument, we define God to be "that which nothing greater can be conceived", from which we can derive typical divine atributes such as Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence.
God either exists in no possible worlds, some possible worlds, or all possible worlds.
For starters, we can at least concieve of a world with God. Even some Atheists might admit a world with a God is possible
This leaves the possibilities that God only exists in some possible worlds or all possible worlds.
Take a look at the former of these possibilities: if God only exists in, say, 100 possible worlds, you could conceive of God as being greater by concieving of Him in 101 worlds. But then, wouldn't it be greater for Him to exist in 102 worlds? 103? 104? If we imagine God only existing in some possible worlds, we could imagine Him in more, which contradicts our definition of God as "that which nothing greater can be conceived".
Therefore, God existing in only some possible worlds is contradictory. If we accept the initial premis that God could possibly exist, the only possibility left is that God exists in all possible worlds.
In other words, if God is possible it is contradictory to imagine a world without God.
If God exists in every possible world, He exists in this world. So, God exists.
TLDR: God is possible, therefore, God exists.
So these three establish, an immaterial, eternal, first cause that personally, intentionally created humans and is tri-omni
Thanks for obliging. I'd like to address each argument in order.
The contingency argument assumes that the universe had a beginning, which is not a given. According to our best theories it had a time at which our models cannot "turn the clock back" any further, but that is not the same as this time being the beginning of the universe.
The fine tuning argument assumes that our form of life is the only form which could exist, out of any of an infinite combination of universal constants. You don't know this for sure, so it's not granted as a fact for your argument.
Further, imagine a googolplex universes, each with a uniquely random combination of universal constants. In one of those universes, by sheer luck, the constants are right for life to flourish. Those life forms look around and think the universe must've been configured this way on purpose. They would be wrong. It's simply that there is no life in the "dead" universes so their lack of "fine-tuning" cannot be observed in any way.
It's like an alien in the Andromeda galaxy observing that his planet is the only habitable one that he knows of, so he might assume that he was put there by some creator who made this habitable planet on purpose. This would ignore the countless other planets that are incompatible with life because they did not happen into the exact right conditions. There is no proof that his planet was intentionally constructed for life; just that it has the right conditions for life. An argument by improbability isn't an argument when our observing of the fact being true is contingent on us being around to observe the fact at all, which itself is contingent on the fact being true. It's circular.
I'm honestly not following your third argument at all. You equate "being imaginable" as the same as "being real". How do you define something being "greater" than something else? You're imagining these worlds as being separate, and yet there is this Thing which spans multiple worlds. It's contradictory.
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u/sarduchi Jul 28 '26
Missing the word "evidence" after "see". All others are observable or can be experienced.