'Cosmological', and 'epistemological', arguments for a 'god'(s)

Hey Bo :)
I came across these 'cosmological', and 'epistemological', arguments for a 'god'(s) recently. I'd like to know what you think of them, from a logical standpoint. :) Kind wishes x

"We begin with the truth that something exists. We know first that we exist, because to deny or even to doubt our own existence, we must first be. We know also that there is a world around us. We may not know much about ourselves or about the world, but we know that these things exist. Their existence means that we or the universe must be (1) eternal or self-created, (2) created by something eternal, or (3) created by something created. If we choose the third alternative, we merely move the question back a step. If the universe was created by something created, then how was the thing that created us created? In the end, we must either accept our second alternative, that the first created thing was created by an eternal thing, or we must affirm an infinite chain of finite causes, stretching back into eternity.
The trouble with the last option is that it is still too early. It is called an "infinite regress." While we might conceive of an infinite chain of contingent causes, we cannot conceive of the time in which those causes would be operating. We know that it takes a week to get through a week. A week ago, when we looked forward to this day, we knew that, barring the end of the world, in seven days this day would be here. But how long would it take to cross through eternity? If there is no beginning, then time has been running forever, eternally. But you cannot cross eternity. That is what I mean by suggesting that it is too early. You can no more make it through an infinite number of yesterdays than you can count from negative infinity to zero, even if you had an infinite amount of time in which to do it. Even God himself cannot traverse an infinite past. We affirm that God precedes time, that there was never a time when he was not, though he existed when time was not.
This theory of an infinite regress, while utter non-sense, has historically been rather common. Primitive cultures would postulate that the world was resting on the back of a turtle, which was standing on an elephant, which was standing on something else, ad infinitum. Some scientists say that we are in the midst of an eternally expanding and contracting universe. The universe dissipates until it begins to contract. It squeezes itself back into a point of singularity, and then explodes outward, until it begins to dissipate again. This, however, tells us nothing about our origin. It only tells us, if it's true, about what's been going on for a while, because, again, if it has been going on forever, it cannot get to today.
Perhaps the most common form of nonsense that seeks to explain the cause of the effect that is the universe around is, is that it created itself. Sometimes the so-called big bang theory is expressed in this way, that the universe, at some point in the distant past, exploded into being. Self-creation, however, is nothing but irrational foolishness. It is a contradiction in terms. In order for the universe to do the work of creating itself, it would, of course, first have to be. It would have to be before it was. There is no universe in existence to create the universe. Even God, who is all-powerful, could not pull that one off. He couldn't create himself, for he would not be there to do the job. (And he could not create himself for another reason: God, by definition, is un-created.)
Both of our remaining options require something that is eternal, something that has the power of being within itself. We have, in some sense, already established that there is some sort of supreme being, a being that is not dependent, derived, or contingent, that is a power until itself. What we have not yet determined is whether this being is the universe (the option which says that the universe is eternal) or transcends the universe. And if it is the latter, we have not determined whether this eternal entity is a person or impersonal being.
However, we can narrow our options down still further. We can know, for instance, that the universe is not eternal. We know this because it changes, and that which changes, by virtue of its changing, is not eternal. Suppose I were to posit that the computer on which I am writing is eternal, that it has always existed. We know this to be false because only one hundred years ago there was no such thing as a computer. Not many years ago, the material making up the computer in front of me was probably a pile of silicon on some beach somewhere, from which the chips were made, a puddle of crude oil somewhere else, from which the plastic was formed, and a pinch of assorted ores from various places, from which the electronic components were made. A hundred years ago, the languages my computer "speaks" did not even exist in the minds of men.
The same is true of us. We cannot be the eternal creator of all things because we change. I used to be thin. Iw as even tall for my age for a while. Now I am neither of those things. I used to fear computers, now I merely have a healthy respect for them. The "I" that I am now is not the same "I" that I was even yesterday. Now I am a day older and a day more decayed. By the time this reaches you, if I am still alive, I will be older and balder still. If the question is raised, "Did R. C. Jr. create the universe?" the next question needs to be "Which one?" It cannot be the R. C. Jr. of today, because I was a different R. C. Jr. yesterday,
There is, however, a part of me that does not change. That's part of what we mean by identity. I remember the thin me as me, and I'm still, in some sense, the same guy. My computer may not always have been a computer, but the silicon has been silicon for a while, and the crude oil, which used to be a dinosaur or some such thing, was made up of atoms that have not changed. If we look beyond the things that change, and find instead some steady, unchanging part of the universe, that has the power of being within itself, then we have found God. God is that or he which is self-existent, independent, and unchangeable. God is transcendent.
Transcendence, however, is not an attribute of geography. When we postulate this unchanging, eternal core of the universe as the source of all things, the unbeliever objects that this is just a part of the universe, that it does not stand outside the universe. But he is confused, about transcendence. When we say that God is transcendent, or above the universe, we are not saying that if one were to climb to the top of the universe, and then take a few steps beyond it, he would be without God. God's transcendence is ontological, pertaining to his being, not to his location. God is transcendent because he is a higher order of being, and he is a higher order of being precisely because he is not contingent, derived, or dependent, but alone has the power of being within himself. Because either we ourselves or the universe exists, something must have the power of being within itself. That is the essence of our cosmological argument. It is also the essence of the argument that Paul describes in Romans 1. We have not yet established that this supreme being is the God of the Bible, but we have established that there is a supreme being who, like the God of the Bible, must be eternal, unchangeable, and the source of all created things.
Our argument is built around a simple extension of the most fundamental rule of logic, the law of non-contradiction. That extension is the law of causality, which says that every effect must have a sufficient cause. That's a careful way of saying both that you can't get something for nothing and that you get what you pay for. The universe, or we ourselves, the effects, must have a cause. And ultimately there must be one cause that is not also an effect, which has the power of being in itself or himself.
That same rule of logic can also help us see still more about the self-existent, immutable being. It can tell us that this being is not impersonal, but personal. We all have an understanding of the hierarchy of being. We know, for instance, that a self-existent being is transcendent over a being that was made by, and is dependent upon, that self-existence being. Beings that live are a higher order of being that those that do not. A plant is a higher order of being that a rock, for instance. Beings with volition are a higher order of being than beings without volition, and so a rabbit is a higher order of being than a plant. And beings with self-consciousness or personhood are a higher order of being that those without, so that a human being is a higher order of being than a rabbit.
Perhaps you see where we're headed. With the laws of logic, it is important to be precise. The law of causality is not merely that every effect has a cause, but that every effect as a sufficient cause. The cause or causes must have sufficient power to produce the effect. You cannot get more from less. It follows that since we have self-consciousness, that which created us must also have self-consciousness. The creator cannot be an impersonal force, but must be personal. The fact that we can communicate means that he must be able to communicate.
We have not demonstrated, and indeed cannot demonstrate, the the God who is described in the Bible is this supreme being. However, we have eliminated the possibility that there could be no god. Of course, in the United States most people still believe in some sort of god. But we have also eliminated any notion of a god that is an impersonal force. And everything that we have deduced about God is utterly consistent with what we learn about God in the Bible.
Some of my friends who want to begin by presupposing the existence of the God of the Bible, find this disappointing. It is not, however, disappointing for Paul. Recall that when he makes the same basic argument in Romans 1, he lists two things that all men know from the existence of the universe about the Creator of the universe. They know his eternal godhead and power. They know that God is self-existent eternally, and that God is sovereign over all things. Paul's argument, however, is not that all men know that there is a being who has attributes that characterise the true God, but which might also characterise some other being. Rather, in knowing these two attributes, men know the God who is, so that they are without excuse. The existence of the universe, whether it is used as the building block of the argument in this chapter or not, is enough to prove compellingly that the God of the universe exists, and that he is the one true God. It is even enough, in a sense, to be a compelling argument. Paul says that all men reach the same conclusion, but that all men, without the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, suppress that knowledge.
There is another way to get at the same conclusion - a different, but similar argument put forth by those who suggest that they begin their knowing by presupposing God's existence. It might even be considered a way that in some sense gets beneath our bedrock of knowing. We demonstrated in earlier chapters that without presupposing the validity of logic, the basic reliability of our senses, and the ability of words to communicate, we cannot know anything. We also noted that God's existence, though not our knowledge of it, precedes the existence of these three non-negotiables. We can get to the existence of God, which ontologically underpins our epistemological starting points, through what my friends call the transcendental argument for the existence of God, and what I prefer to call the epistemological argument for the existence of God.
The argument notes that none of the three nonnegotiables of knowing have a separate, independent existence. They are not eternal things, for without a knowing mind there would be no logic, without senses to perceive there would be no perception, and without two minds to communicate there would be no language. These nonnegotiables exist, we know, because they are necessary for knowing things, and we know that we know things. We know that we know things because, as we saw in our chapter on skepticism, to deny that we know things is to affirm that we know something, namely, that we cannot know things. Knowledge is inescapable, just as our own existence is inescapable. And both need a sufficient cause to explain their existence.
These nonnegotiables, we notes, are not and cannot be self-existent. Those who want to start by presupposing God make the valid point that these nonnegotiables for knowing require a source, a source that is transcendent. As we said earlier, epistemologically, we must start with how we know. We cannot skip the elements of knowing to affirm the source of those elements. But we must ask how those things by which we known came to be. The answer must be God. The argument can be reduced to this syllogism: In order for there to be knowledge, there must be a God (or a transcendent knower). There is knowledge. Therefore, there is a God. The form of the argument is valid, the classic modus ponens form of deduction. If the first and second premises are true, the conclusion must be true. This is the epistemological argument for the existence of God." - Tearing Down Strongholds, R. C. Sproul Jr.

Virtually all arguments for God have the same logical flaw: they either presuppose God or they attempt to calculate the probability of such a being. The reason that calculating the probability is a flaw is because in order to calculate the probability of something we must have background data. For example, what is the probability that we will get a one when we roll a die? One in six. We know this because we know how many options there are in this finite system of probability. In a possibly infinite cosmos with a supposedly infinite god, such probability calculations are impossible. The best apologists can do is to appeal to our incomprehension of the law of large numbers and make naturalistic explanations seem implausible, then insert a magic being to "solve" the problem. Atheists will often claim that a god is far more improbable than some naturalistic explanation, but this too, is fallacious because of the reasons above. These arguments are really arguments of plausibility , but we know that scientific fact and reality very often contradicts common sense and what we would expect to be "plausible."