AKG wrote:

So to clear my head from that experience, I want to ask you guys what you believe to be the strongest arguments for God, and the ones that you like or are convinced by the most.

I would hold that some variation of the PSR Cosmological Argument is the clearest proof we have. That people brought up in an age where the virtue of reason and the necessity of finding rational explanations are stressed from an early age could think the Brute Fact explanation of the Multiverse anything but madness always astonishes me. When I say clearest I mean that the basic reasoning behind it is the most transparent - the main work still to be done with the argument is deciding on what exactly is the correct formulation of the PSR, one which avoids odd problems like Modal Collapse. Even in the absence of that we are still safe to rely on a weaker Davies version that states all contingent beings need a reason for their existence.
 
The argument I like the most is the Ontological Argument, at least in its modal formulations. It takes us to the heart of the sort of being God is, Absolute Perfection: any being which could even contain the possibility of non-being simply could not be God. The fact that the argument aims to elucidate the reality of God, from the logic of essences along without necessarily needing to admit the existence of contingent beings (only their possibility) makes of it a purer proof. I don’t think it is as strong as the PSR argument, or at least it’s far more complicated to defend, as one has to justify premise one i.e. that God is possible, which will in part* fall back on our modal intuitions – unlike Plantinga I definitely agree with WLC that justifiation for premise one can be arrived at conceptual analysis of the Divine Attributes.  
 
*I qualify this since there is a sub-species of Ontological Argument derived through Scotus and Leibniz to Kurt Godel which seeks to justify premise one by arguing that the nature of a pure perfection entails its compossibility with others. Robert Maydole had developed an even more sophisticated version of the OA along these lines – for a rare easy to follow summary see here– but I’m a bit uncertain about that as some of the logical formula it involves may commit us to odd consequences.

EDIT: On a more holistic view considerations relating to change, causality, induction and the laws of nature give us every reason to endorse a broadly Aristotelian ontology and philosophy of nature. With this in mind the truth of something like the First Way becomes highly likely. Also if we want to take Aristotelean Actualism to a 'world' encompassing level then that likely commits us to an omnipotent necessary being too.

AKG wrote:

I also want to ask if your bothered by the fact that most modern philosophers are atheist.

 
No, why would it? After all the objections the majority of philosophers, including professional logicians, tend to give to theistic arguments - bits of recooked Hume and Kant ‘the cosmological argument involves a quantifier shift’, ‘existence is not a predicate’ - are ones which professional atheist philosophers of religion would admit are spurious. All majority opinion leads me to conclude is that most philosophers are woefully ignorant of what is being discussed.
 
I would also add that historically the vast majority of philosophers since the time of Plato have been theists or pantheists.  This is not necessarily an argument for theism but it definitely serves to neutralise any rhetorical value statements of majority atheism might have.

Last edited by DanielCC (8/24/2015 11:05 am)

I think my favorite is probably Rosmini's "ontological" argument (it's really an eternal truths cosmological argument; other people applied the moniker "ontological" to it) he gives at the end of his New Essay on the Origin of Ideas.
link - http://www.rosmini-in-english.org/NewEssay_03/Sect_7/NE3_S7Ch07.htm

And while we are at it, Rosmini gives a really good argument for the necessity of the Principle of Causality. link- http://www.rosmini-in-english.org/NewEssay_01/NE1_Sect4/NE1_S04C03_P2.htm#Art_23

Last edited by Timotheos (8/31/2015 10:25 pm)

DanielCC wrote:

Alexander wrote:

I'm also convinced something like the henological argument presented by Feser in Neo-Scholastic essays should work.

Out of interest what essay is this in? I don't have Neo-Scholastic Essays as I was under the impression most of the contents were reprints.

Didn't Feser say that they were often expanded versions? I've not checked.

Granted, I'm sure he wanted to sell books, but I got the impression from him that he did try to make the book worth having.

Last edited by iwpoe (9/01/2015 8:40 am)