I’m particular to Kierkegaard’s, but that’s because I come from an agnostic perspective and his approach to Christianity, his conclusions, and his general methodology have other uses for me. I’d recommend to at least check out Fear and Trembling and Sickness Unto Death. Either/Or can be a bit...hard to get through.

Ultimately, though, Kierkegaard might not be the best if you’re looking for a philosopher who’s going to “prove” to you that god exists. Or even give you anything other than a bleak outlook.

I mean, if you’re looking in “modern philosophy,” I’d just start with Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and go from there.

My only advice is to keep reading even if you predetermine a philosopher to hold a point of view that you, like, knee-jerk disagree with.

Ultimately, why not just take something like Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition or Richard Forty’s Philosophy and the Mirror Of Nature and (unintuitively) use it as a rationalization to believe whatever you want (at least, within some sort of ethical framework that enables you to fit in with the rest of society), albeit in a localized, ad hoc kind of way?

Everyone feel free to disagree with me, I don’t want to get brigaded and I’m not looking for a protracted argument, but isn’t the progression of academic philosophy just kind of leading to that conclusion? That the search for universally valid “objective” truth is ultimately futile because of our inherently subjective constitution?

And ultimately there’s going to be a counterargument to whatever position you take, and a counterargument to that and so on, so just ground your knowledge on conditionality or use the “screw you I believe what I want” line of reasoning.

I mean, Hegel believed in god (don’t @ me, as I said, feel free to think I’m wrong), why not read the Phenomenology of Spirit? If anything, it’ll at least give you food for thought and also probably a headache.