The miracle of theism: does any argument for the existence of God succeed, separately or cumulatively?

J. L. Mackie, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

No argument for theism succeeds, and the cumulative case does not repair the individual failures. The question is to be settled by argument to the best explanation, in exactly the way a detective, a historian or a court settles a question, and on that standard theism loses. The title is the conclusion: given how badly the arguments fare, the persistence and spread of the belief is the phenomenon that requires explaining.¹²

Sources

1. But most of the arguments on either side are not like this: they include important non-deductive elements. Each of them starts from various pieces of evidence or considerations about some part of our experience, and in many cases the conclusions clearly go beyond what is contained, even implicitly, in the premisses.

   The Miracle of Theism, Arguments For and Against the Existence of God, pp. 8–9

2. To rebut scepticism, faith or natural belief must seek understanding, reasoned support. We shall further examine the place of faith and its relation to reason in Chapter 11, with reference to the work both of James and of Kierkegaard.

   The Miracle of Theism, Arguments For and Against the Existence of God, p. 11

Where the argument is made

• The Miracle of Theism (1982), Introduction and chs. 1-14: the ontological arguments (ch. 3), cosmological (ch. 5), teleological, the argument from consciousness, the moral argument, miracles and testimony, religious experience, the natural histories of religion (ch. 10), Pascal, James and Kierkegaard on faith (ch. 11), and the cumulative case (ch. 14)

How the argument was received

The standard atheist survey of the field, and disputed at nearly every point by its theistic contemporaries.