Ian Crofton big Idea # 66 is Arguments for the existence of God
Crofton looks at the arguments used to justify a belief in God
the four points he gives are:
at Number 1 the Cosmological argument this is also known as 'The first cause argument' (so it logically sits at the top of our list) it takes the existence of the universe to entail the existence of a 'something' that created it. It does so based on the fact that the universe had a beginning. There must, the first cause argument says, be something that caused that beginning. Saint Thomas Aquinas is the guy who's credited with this argument here's' an argument for it and another against it here.
Number 2 is the Design argument also known as a 'teleological' argument, this one uses the identifying of various empirical features of the world that constitute evidence of 'intelligent design' and from this inferring God’s existence as the best explanation for these features - William Paley's watchmaker analogy is used to help justify the idea too you can see an argument against this view here
Number 3 is the Ontological this is the argument that is summed up by “That Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived” and goes along the lines if you can think it up it must be true - am wary of this one and have sympathy with this critique.The fourth one that Crofton gives us is the Moral one - which says (from existence of god website) that there couldn’t be such a thing as morality without God; to use the words that Sartre attributed to Dostoyevsky, “If there is no God, then everything is permissible.” That there are moral laws, then, that not everything is permissible, proves that God exists. I quite like the arguments against here
