>>1313377
> devout Catholic
> what's the best argument for the existence of God

Aquinas. Check out Edward Feser for an explanation.

I was in a similar situation to you about a year ago.

Then I found this website is be started reading articles in the 1906 Catholic Encyclopedia, I started with the article about the etymology of the word "God": http://newadvent.org/cathen/06608x.htm

Then the article dedicated to arguing the existence of God: http://newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm

I was an agnostic, leaning towards atheism, but the article does make a reasonable logical argument for theism (it doesn't try to assert Catholicism or even Christianity, it just tries to argue for simple theism).

Be sure to read other articles in this encyclopedia too, you will see that Catholic scholars are actually very well balanced and are serious academics.

>>1313377
Look up the ontological proof.
The short version is that "God" is simply the greatest being that we can conceive of. This follows with Genesis, where the greatest being we know exists is Nature, and so the greatest being we can conceive of is the creator of Nature

There's some branch of philosophy that deals with this. Martin Heidegger focuses on it a fair amount. Do yourself a favor and follow the idea of "being" up from Descartes if you want to understand it. Don't work from wikipedia either, because they'll bring some master-level thesis at you in the introductory phases. Either take a class on it, or self-teach by reading their books and asking questions

My thoughts:
God is not a person like George Clooney or James Joyce is a person. "God" is simply the name we give to the greatest being, whatever that may be. As our knowledge of the universe expands and we become aware of things greater than Earth (i.e. Gaia i.e. Nature), what we call "God" also expands.
It's like if a peasant knows only the local lord, who we'll call Lord Joffery. Lord Joffery is not the greatest lord, he in fact owes allegiance to Lord Henry, and Lord Henry in turn owes loyalty to King George. As the peasant becomes more worldly, he may hear of these greater powers than his own Lord Joffery. King George of course, is not even the greatest power, only the greatest power of some small island or mountainous region. There are the greater Kings Mark, Matthew, and so on, who are owed loyalty by more Lords and control larger lands.

This does not mean that Joffery does not exist or does not hold power, it simply means that the "greatest being" the peasant is aware of is expanding, and he'll shift who he says the greatest being is based on how much he knows of the outside world.
Moreover, "God" as a title shifts from Joffery on up. That does not mean God is wrong or does not exist, but that our understanding of him was initially incorrect and has now been adjusted to be more correct.

>>1313502
anyway, so worry less about what various Good Books command you, and just acknowledge that the Greek concept of Knowledge as the only Good and Ignorance as the only Evil is still not wrong.

>>1313377
looking for a great argument for the existence? try focusing more on this... what banged, and why? we don't know, and we likely never will. could there have been "someone" that caused the universe to exist? sure. we don't know though. pretty much all religious texts are objectively full of shit though (full of stuff that's demonstrably false), so ignore that crap, and go on with your life accepting that you don't know and never will. you'll be much happier.

>>1313617
this was a whole lot of words that don't really say anything

take a nap anon