What is meant by God is the Most High - the greatest of all perfections, the first of all causes, the highest of all natures, the most necessary of all beings.
Given that there is a gradient of perfections in nature (inanimate to animated, unintelligent to intelligent, irrational to rational, material to spiritually-inclined, dark to bright, etc), and given the principle of proportional causality where causes must be greater than their effects, and given that there cannot be an infinite regression of perfections in causes, then there must be a most perfect cause.
Given that there are effects in nature that are not themselves eternal, and thus must have been caused by something else, and given that there cannot be an infinite regression of efficient causes, there must be a First Cause.
Given that there is contingent being (i.e. being that depends on something else to exist), and given that there cannot be an infinite regression of contingent beings, then there must be an absolutely necessary being somewhere at the beginning.
Whatever this first cause, this highest perfection, this greatest nature is, I call Him God - and I attribute Personhood to Him because a Person is a higher nature than a non-person, and so in an analogical or virtual sense I view this as more appropriate than to call God an "it". So the very existence of contingent being, and caused effects, and lower perfections serves as the evidence for God's existence.
The existence of sky fairies, however, I do not defend.
That's a good comment.
But that first cause could have been some autistic faggot in a lab coat in some higher dimensional universe jerking off into a petri dish.
It could be autistic faggots all the way down.
While the theoretical possibility of "this universe" being caused by some dude in a labcoat technically exists, the fact remains that such a scientist could not be the first cause; he could only fulfil an earlier place in the chain of causes. This is because anything with a body is composed of parts (unless it is prime matter, which is something even less than an atom according to quantum mechanics), and anything composed of parts is contingent on those parts - depends on those parts for its being. Furthermore, an embodied thing is limited by the bounds of its body, and thus cannot be the highest of all natures or the greatest of all perfections, since there is a theoretical "potency" or potential still within such a being. For not only must whatever God is be entirely necessary, but what follows from this is that God must be Pure Act - pure actuality. There can be no unactualized potential in God, there can be nothing that is not already fulfilled in Him. A man with a body is limited, is finite; God must be infinite.
So even if some dude in a labcoat did create this universe, the God I believe in still would have had to create him.
And based on the principle of economy, it is less reasonable to suppose that God created some dude in a labcoat to create this universe, than to suppose that God created this universe.
(post is archived)