The Evidence
Philosophical Arguments
Cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological frameworks
The Moral Argument for God's Existence
J. L. Mackie, the twentieth century's most formidable atheist philosopher, agreed that objective moral values would be entities of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe — and therefore concluded they do not exist.
high confidence
The Problem of Evil: Christian Responses
high confidenceTheodicy
J. L. Mackie framed the logical problem of evil in Mind in 1955; in 1982 he conceded that Alvin Plantinga's free will defence had answered it, and the philosophical debate moved to the weaker evidential form.
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The Contingency Argument (Leibniz)
high confidenceCosmological
Leibniz asked in 1697 why there is something rather than nothing, and answered that no chain of contingent things can supply its own explanation — the series must terminate in a being that exists by the necessity of its own nature.
The Minimal Facts Resurrection Argument
high confidenceHistorical-Apologetics
Gerd Ludemann, an atheist New Testament scholar at Gottingen, wrote that it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which he appeared to them as the risen Christ. The minimal-facts argument builds only on data of that kind.
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The Ontological Argument (Anselm, Plantinga)
medium confidenceOntological
Anselm's argument from the Proslogion (c. 1078) has never been decisively refuted or widely accepted; Alvin Plantinga's 1974 modal restatement is formally valid, so the entire dispute now rests on whether one premise — that a maximally great being is possible — is true.