Reasons to Believe in God In Simple English

Often the debate about God's existence feels like it belongs to the philosophers with their doctorates and essays full of complicated words. But God is for everybody, and so his existence should be clear to everybody - just like the book of Romans suggests.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. -- Romans 1:20 (NIV)

But the book of Romans also tells us about truth being suppressed. It seems to me that a lot of God's truth has been suppressed. So it might not be the case that each individual suppresses the truth for themselves, but they might be victims of other people suppressing it for them.

I believe it is hugely important for this information to be public knowledge, and not just kept by the intellectual elites who's careers revolve around it. There is far too much misinformation in the world, especially with the internet and the ease that anybody can share their opinions. There are people who believe that the Earth is flat, there are people who believe that we never landed on the moon, there are people who believe dinosaurs never existed, there are people who think the Holocaust never happened. These are extreme cases, but just like these people, there are many people in the world who have been duped by other ideas in exactly the same way. People believe that all cowboys wore stetsons, people believe that knights needed to be put on horses by crane, people believe that Captain Kirk said "Beam me up Scotty". Misinformation spreads easily, and for many reasons. When this happens, the truth becomes suppressed. So it is very important that we take care to check what we believe and make sure it lines up with truth.

So what follows are a few reasons, based entirely in truth, that tell us without doubt that God is real. I aim to keep this as simple as possible, so I will not go into much depth on each, and I encourage you to read more on any subject that takes your interest. I'll also comment that these are not even all of the reasons that are available to us. This is just a small selection of some of the best.

Why Do We Have Faith?

Faith is so often misrepresented by non-believers. Richard Dawkins describes it this way:

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

As usual, Dawkins is spouting complete drivel. Here's a great quote from John Lennox, a professor of mathematics at Oxford, who has debated Dawkins a few times, and each time utterly torn his worldview to shreds.

"Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence… It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That provides a very anti-intellectual and convenient way of avoiding intelligent discussion."

That's the difference. We're all on Dawkins' side if he's talking about blind faith - believing without thinking. But actual faith is not that. The faith that most people talk about regularly is not that. As Lennox will tell you, the word 'faith' comes from the Latin 'fides', which means trust. You have faith in your family, faith in your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife, faith in your government (maybe). And you usually say that you have faith in them because they've never let you down before or you know them well enough that they will come through. You trust them. The phrase 'faith in humanity' gets thrown around a lot, although more often than not, it's mentioned as a 'loss of faith'. It's still talking about trust.

Pretty much the only time I hear faith being bundled up with blind faith as the same thing is when fundie atheists are using the word in reference to religious belief.

As John Lennox said, faith/trust is based on evidence and that is the Biblical definition too. The number of preachers and prophets throughout the book who ask questions and want a bit more evidence to keep their faith strong should be plenty enough to destroy this stupid definition of faith completely. Doubting Thomas is probably one of the most famous episodes of Jesus' story. He wanted evidence, Jesus gave it to him, his faith was strengthened.

So when Dawkins, Harris or the other New Atheists talk about faith, they're talking about 'blind faith'. And that is not something any Christian is into! So they're wasting everyone's time...

So what is the evidence that Christians have?