Clarification

I should point out that, as an Orthodox Christian, I can't claim that it is possible to prove the existence of God by reasoned arguments, since knowledge of God is innate in humans and prior to any reasoned proof, according to Orthodox doctrine. So these studies in natural theology can't be interpreted as demonstrating a progression from lack of knowledge of God to knowledge of God. They can, on the other hand, be understood as an explication, through the application of reason, of that knowledge of God, which we already possess.

Indeed, the truth of the Orthodox doctrine is confirmed by the fact that, logically, none of the arguments for God's existence are completely successful. This has the interesting consequence that knowledge of God is not only the property of those intelligent enough to understand the arguments. The flip side, of course, is that none of the arguments against God's existence are successful, which leaves the honest student only to accept those arguments that are consonant with the knowledge he already possesses about God, which in turn, as the Orthodox Church maintains, is affirmative. However, free will is respected in acceptance of the proofs is not compelled by logic, and therefore the individual is free to mis-attribute his innate knowledge of God to some other entity, whether a non-physical being with properties different from the God of Orthodoxy, or some physical entity in the visible world.