First, consider the alternative: natural theology. It is a failure on two levels. On a technical basis, all the arguments which constitute natural theology rest upon a claim that God can be known in the same way that we know any subject of our experience. No matter how clever the argument, the basic premise saddles a natural deity with some very limiting baggage – like an appointment book of times and places where the deity must be, with the associated activities and relationships. And, if the deity is the sort of fellow who can have an appointment book, then It is not the sort of fellow who can have all the limitless characteristics(?) which make a deity interesting.
Which leads to the level two problem: the arguments of natural theology lead to a deity who is completely uninteresting. Let’s say that someone came up with a cosmological argument which made sense, for instance. God is left with some familiar questions. It can’t tell anything about the source of Its motive by examining It’s creative act. It can’t say why It woke on our day #1 with the thought of creation in Its mind, any more than I can say why I looked at the ceiling fan when I opened my eyes this morning*. We are left with a God who is a guy. It’s a very powerful guy, but one who is in the same metaphysical boat as we are.
Two arguments are typically advanced to remedy the above situation. Let’s call them the Springboard argument and the Aspect argument. In the Springboard, we creep to the edge of an explanatory plank (think Aquinas’ contingency argument) and then launch to a conclusion by inference. For instance, the conclusion that, because we can’t abide an infinite regress of contingent causes, there must be a non-contingent cause at the source of causation.
In the Aspect argument, we are told that we may discover aspects of the deity by analysis of our experience, but that we should not expect to see Its whole structure due to our own limitations, though that structure is implied in the aspects.
The trouble is, neither of these arguments offer any explanation of what is in their remainders – the unexplained parts. In the Springboard, the remainders are things like an explanation of non-contingent causality. In the Aspect, the remainders are relations between things like intentionality and aseity or omnipresence. In other words, there is no account, in either the Springboard or the Aspect arguments, of the things lost in the guy-God conclusions of natural theology.
Implications are fine, but in the end, we need to be able to say what is implied, or we have gotten nowhere. Both the Springboard and the Aspect fail to give such an account, and we can see in their shared mode of failure, that they are actually the same argument. To understand an aspect of something which is unlimited and fully extant, is to understand nothing about “it”. To leap into an inexplicable conclusion, is to leap into the void.
But we are faced with voids no matter which way we turn. There are situations where we can’t climb out of our own skins (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Blackburn) to look into our own motives or the intelligibility of our experience. In those cases, no beliefs are possible, but assertions are as good as a shrug and a shake of the head.
So, if you feel that there must be something rather than nothing, nothing is stopping you. There.
*I can give a reductive explanation for what motivated me to look at the ceiling fan, but then I must explain my motive for reducing and explaining, and so on and so on…the motives seem to come first.
In his book “The Personhood of God,” theologian Yochanan Muffs agrees with you about the God of natural theology:
“Most modern theologies—Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—on the other hand, simply adjust the old anthropomorphic traditions to some of the demands of philosophy: God is still a person, but this personhood has been stripped of all somatic content. God, in all three faiths, has been reduced—or elevated, according to one’s own personal taste—to an impersonal principle: Omniscient, Omnipotent, All-Good, Infinite, and so on. The interpersonal drama—with its tension, absurdity, and humor—has been read away for the sake of doctrinal propriety. Thus, neither philosophy nor myth has had its way: in fact, both have had their wings clipped. Philosophy has lost its radical doubt (God is still affirmed as a person), while myth has lost its fire (God is not much of a person.”