That being said, according to a CNS news article from December 17, 2013, "A new Harris Poll finds that a strong majority (74 percent) of U.S. adults say they believe in God, but that's down from the 82 percent who expressed such a belief in earlier years. Belief in miracles, heaven and other religious teachings also declined.
While some of the theories proposed discussed this semester by various philosophers were slightly difficult to fully understand, several readings in the textbook were given in which supported the topic that there is a God who exists: First was "the ontological argument" by Saint Anselm of Canterbury, a Christian philosopher. This argument basically stated that because we have a conception of an all-perfect being, which he defined as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived", it has to exist. In his essay Proslogion, St. Anselm conceived God as a being who possesses all conceivable perfection. But if this being "existed" just as an idea in our minds, then it would be less perfect than if it actually existed. So it would not be as great as a being who actually existed, something that would therefore contradict our definition of God; a being who's supposed to be all-perfect. Thus, God must exist. A second reading suggested that there had to have been something to cause the universe to exist. In what is called the "First Cause Argument," Bertrand Russell assumes that every event must have a cause, and that cause in turn must have a cause, and on and on and on. Assuming there is no end to this regression of causes, this succession of events would be infinite. But an infinite series of causes and events doesn't make sense (a causal loop cannot exist, nor a causal chain of infinite length). There had to be something, some kind of first cause, that is itself uncaused or unchanged. This would require some kind of "unconditioned" or "higher" being, which he feels, must be God.