The List of Premises from 16 Arguments for God

Saint Thomas Aquinas by Sandro Botticelli (edited)

We compiled some of the most basic arguments for God’s existence in our Theologetic Table of Evidence and I had the idea to create a single list of all the premises from these basic arguments. Regarding the basics of an argument, if an argument follows the rules of logic then it is valid and if that argument has true premises, then the argument is also said to be sound. Many of the arguments listed are different types of syllogisms. It seemed to me that having a list of all the premises could possibly aid in developing other arguments for God or could be used to simply compare and contrast the different premises to try and deduce if any were at odds with each other (or at least seemingly so). Below you will find the simple list and below that is the list of the arguments the premises were taken from. I did not include the conclusions in this list. There are other arguments out there, some not as basic as the ones we used, but adding their premises could possibly be helpful so this list could potentially be updated in the future.

God exists and we can know this because of nature, revelation, conscience, personal experience and LOGIC!

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Premises

a. Logical absolutes exist.
a. Logical absolutes are conceptual by nature–are not dependent on space, time, physical properties, or human nature. They are not the product of the physical universe (space, time, matter) because if the physical universe were to disappear, logical absolutes would still be true. Logical Absolutes are not the product of human minds because human minds are different–not absolute.
a. Since logical absolutes are always true everywhere and not dependent upon human minds, it must be an absolute transcendent mind that is authoring them.
b. Objects have properties to greater or lesser extents.
b. If an object has a property to a lesser extent, then there exists some other object that has the property to the maximum possible degree.
c. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
c. The universe began to exist.
d. All designs imply a designer.
d. There is great design in the universe.
e. Objective moral Laws require a Moral Law Giver.
e. There is an objective moral law.
f. If God exists, we must conceive of him as a Necessary Being.
f. By definition, a Necessary Being cannot not exist.
g. A miracle is an event whose only adequate explanation is the extraordinary and direct intervention of God.
g. There are numerous well-attested miracles in history.
h. Consciousness is either a property of a non-conscious reality or of an ultimate consciousness.
h. Consciousness is not a property of a non-conscious reality.
i. All natural desires have existing objects that they are desires for.
i. Joy is a natural desire for an infinite object.
j. Beauty is universally recognized.
j. The common definition of what is beautiful transcends the individual and must have an ultimate source.
k. There can be no free will in a totally naturalistic system.
k. A degree of free will exists.
l. Information codes and language systems are only known to originate from an intelligence.
l. Within DNA can be found an information code.
l. The only intelligence capable of producing DNA is God.
m. If premises begin to exist without reason, then conclusions drawn from them are also without reason.
m. If there is no god, all initial human premises about the external world begin to exist without reason.
n. Anything that is contingent has an explanation.
n. The universe is contingent.
o. The Old Testament was written hundreds of years before the New Testament.
o. The Old Testament contains at least 191 Messianic prophecies.
o. Jesus fulfilled these prophecies as recorded in the New Testament.
p. The more sound arguments there are for a proposition, the more confidence we can have in it’s validity.
p. There are many distinct sound arguments for the existence of God.

Arguments

a. The Transcendental Argument
b. The Degree of Perfection Argument
c. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
d. The Teleological Argument
e. The Moral Argument
f. The Ontological Argument
g. The Miracles Argument
h. The Consciousness Argument
i. The Sense of Divinity Argument
j. The Beauty Argument
k. The Free Will Argument
l. Information Theory
m. The Truth Argument
n. The Contingency Argument
o. The Messianic Prophecy Argument
p. The Abundance of Arguments Argument

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Clark Campbell
Theologetics.org