Let's be honest

[Belacqua]

OK, reaching out to my agnostic/atheist friends.  I'm very curious, genuinely interested, are there are "arguments" that theists have provided for proof of a God's existence (not even the Christian God), that you found compelling?  Or caused you to pause and perhaps say, there might be A God out there?

I suppose it's easier to say which arguments are definitively NOT compelling. These would include all the literalists' desperate attempts to claim that Noah's ark has been discovered in Turkey, or Pharaoh's chariot wheels have been discovered at the bottom of the Red Sea -- flimsy archeological evidence. 

Likewise apparitions of the Virgin Mary in stains on walls, or things like that. 

Much more compelling are the arguments from philosophers. I actually knew a guy who went to grad school to write about Aristotle and ended up Catholic. I remain unpersuaded but I also know that I am ignorant of the full implications and most complete versions of these systems. In fact it might be better not to say "argument," as if that's something you could present in a soundbite during a debate. It's always the full system that seems logical and internally coherent, as well as hard to falsify definitively. 

Certain versions of Aristotle's system, Neoplatonism, Spinoza, and others remain, for me, open questions. 

I found that when it's all broken down in most debates, an agnostic/atheist boils down to moral arguments/judgments against God, which in and of themselves does not disprove there being a God per se.  Just that they refuse to accept a God they find reprehensible.

Yes, we hear this kind of thing all the time, on this forum and on similar sites. "If God is so great why do kids get cancer?!?!" I agree this is a powerful argument against certain conceptions of God that are presented by some Christians. Since many atheists think of this as the only conception of God that Christians can have, it seems definitive to them. The argument is, "If I were God I would do certain things, and since no one is doing them [e.g. keeping kids healthy] then there can't be a God."

In the end though I doubt that many people decide one way or another based on one or two arguments. Acceptance of a religious worldview or a naturalist one is probably due to a web of experiences and influences. A logical syllogism-type argument that seems persuasive to a person of one background will not seem so to others. (And by "background" I don't just mean that a person was taken to church as a child. We all live in societies with various crosscurrents, and the "science equals truth" motto is strong even in majority-Christian parts of the country.) 

The most powerful "argument" for me was the first time I went to the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. I was 17 and had grown up in a town where the largest indoor space was the basketball stadium. The overall sensory experience of the light, the music, the incense, the overwhelming beauty of the architecture, made me think, for about 10 minutes, "It's all true." Pretty quickly I had persuaded myself that it was "just aesthetics" and I shouldn't read too much into it. After many years of studying aesthetics, though, I think that "just aesthetics" may not be as good a counter-argument as I thought.