Following on from recent discussions, I will try to discuss positive arguments for God's existence, and hopefully some decent discussion can out of it (and there won't be an inundation of fallacy). Again, mostly because I'm lazy, I will start by posting the basic argument and give support for premises in response to queries, rather than fillin the background from the beginning. I will start with Plotinus'/The Neoplatonic version of the cosmological argument, based on the appeal to divine simplicity, mostly because Edward Feser has a good, accessible formulation of it (adapted by Lloyd Gerson's):
Edward Feser: Plotinus on divine simplicity, Part I
1. There must be a first principle of all if there is to be an explanation of why the world exists.
2. If the first principle of all were composed of parts, then those parts would be ontologically prior to it.
3. But in that case it would not be the first principle of all.
4. So the first principle is not composed of parts, but is absolutely simple.
5. If there were a distinction between
what the first principle is and the fact
that it is, then there could be more than one first principle.
6. But in order for there to be more than one, there would have to be some attribute that distinguished them.
7. But since a first principle is absolutely simple, there can be no such attribute.
8. So there cannot be more than one first principle.
9. So there is no distinction in the first principle between what it is and the fact that it is.
10. So the first principle is not only absolutely simple but utterly unique: the One.
Although I said I wouldn't start by giving background or support to the premises, it is worth quoting Feser on the first premise, because that is bound to be misunderstood, especially by people who specialise in misunderstandings:
What is meant by a “first principle” in step (1) is, essentially, a bottom level explanation of the world, something that explains everything else without needing an explanation itself. Accordingly, this premise is at least implicitly accepted by the atheist no less than by the theist, at least insofar as the atheist regards scientific explanations as terminating in a most fundamental level of physical laws that determine all the rest – whether this takes the form of a “Theory of everything” or instead a conjunction of several physical theories left unreduced to some such single theory. The dispute between Plotinus and the atheist, then, would not be over the existence of a “first principle,” but rather over its character. And Plotinus wants to show in the rest of the argument that the first principle of all would have to be simple in (something like) the sense of “simplicity” enshrined in the doctrine of divine simplicity.
By the way, Feser's Cosmological Argument Roundup is a great online resource on cosmological arguments:
Edward Feser: Cosmological argument roundup
If anyone has any other arguments they like, please post them.
