On Conversions and Arguments for God's Existence

This is interesting.  I think I'll add her new blog to my very small and random blogroll.  Leah Libresco (right), a fairly popular atheist blogger, recently announced that she has decided to convert to Roman Catholicism.  From what I gather, a big factor in her conversion was the difficulty of believing in a real moral law without believing in a personal moral law giver.  She was influenced by the writings of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton...no surprise there.  Who isn't? 

Anyway, I found it interesting that it was the Moral Argument that was most persuasive to her.  My friend Luke Conway over at The Apologetic Professor started a series of posts rating the arguments for God's existence, but inexplicably left this one out (unless I'm missing one somewhere...if so, then sorry, Luke).  Our philosophy study group discussed the arguments for God's existence once upon a time and it seemed that most everyone considered this one good.  It gets me to thinking, though: what makes an argument for God's existence good, or even great?  Graham Oppy, an atheist philosopher of religion, recently said that a "successful" argument for God's existence is one that will persuade all reasonable theists, atheists, and agnostics who are willing to be objective and aren't prejudiced to their point of view.  To me this sounds ridiculous.  There's probably never been an argument for anything ever that would be "successful" by that definition.  As a Christian who believes humans operate with injured cognitive faculties due to the fall, I doubt it's even possible for such an argument to exist.  Generally speaking, I think that what makes an argument "successful" has to be consideration of the arguments persuasive success relative to other arguments for the same thing, or to arguments in the same field but for other things (so it would be possible to compare the success of the Kalam Cosmological Argument to that of the Evidential Argument from Evil, even though they argue for opposite things).  I'm open to suggestions for changing this notion, though.

My favorite one is the Ontological Argument.  I'm not sure it's the best, but it's my favorite.  Especially Plantinga's version.  It's just so simple it's downright elegant.  But I'm really starting to think that what makes an argument great is its persuasiveness to those not already prone to believing the conclusion.  I'm not sure I've ever heard of anyone coming to a belief in God based on the Ontological Argument or the Argument from Aesthetics, but the late Antony Flew went from atheist to deist based on the Teleological Argument, Ms. Libresco went to Catholicism based on the Moral Argument (as did C.S. Lewis in part, if I remember correctly...though not specifically Catholicism).  A guy I once knew was persuaded to become a Christian based on the Argument from Miracles (specifically the resurrection of Christ). 

The problem is that it could just be that the reason some arguments aren't successful isn't because they aren't good, but because most of those who hear the argument don't understand the argument.  This is almost certainly the case with the Ontological Argument - probably 99% of people who've only heard the argument once or twice have no idea the force of the argument or how it comes to the conclusion to which it aims.  This is definitely not the case with any of the design arguments or cosmological arguments or the Argument from Miracles.  I have a hard time thinking that complexity can be considered a flaw in an otherwise valid (and hopefully sound) argument.

Maybe there is a difference between a good argument and a successful argument.  There's no doubt that the Ontological Argument is a good argument - it's been the source of great discussion for just shy of a millennium.  But it's probably not very successful in that I doubt anyone has ever come to believe in God based on the argument.  I just doubt that success is the higher virtue between the two.  The famous math argument to prove that 1=2 comes to mind.  It's tricky, but anyone who knows math knows why it's wrong.  Nevertheless, it may prove to be successful in occasionally tricking those with little math skill (like myself) into thinking that math must be bunkum.  Is it a better type of argument purely because it enjoys occasional success?  I would say no.  It's better for an argument to be good (i.e. correct, valid, sound, etc.) than successful, even if the success of the argument must be sacrificed in order to make it good.

Anyway, now that that's been dealt with in an unsatisfactory manner, I'm just going to rank what I consider to be the top 5 arguments for God's existence...just the ones I like the most, not saying anything about their persuasiveness or success:

5. Anselm's Ontological Argument
4. Teleological Argument (design of the universe/anthropic principle)
3. Kalam Cosmological Argument
2. Moral Argument (sorry this is an outline, but Mavrodes' paper isn't available online)
1. Plantinga's Ontological Argument

Alvin Plantinga is my hero.

I'm pretty sure someone illegally transplanted text from Plantinga's "God, Freedom, and Evil" to get all that on the great interweb.  So Alvin, if you read this (yeah right), I'm sorry - it wasn't me, but I did have to link to it.  To close, I'll just explain my love for Plantinga's argument.  In short, if it's successful, then it proves God exists.  But the key is that even if it doesn't prove God's existence, it still puts the burden of proof squarely on the atheist.  According to the argument, if it is even logically possible for God to exist (if He exists in even one logically possible, but non-actual world), then it is logically necessary that He exists (in every logically possible world, thus necessarily including the actual world).  If sound, this would render probabilistic atheistic arguments like the Evidential Argument from Evil or the Argument from Divine Hiddenness moot, since they don't make claims about logical possibility.