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?

How Do Philosophical Arguments Work?

For those who aren't philosophically trained, it might be a bit strange the first time you see a philosophical argument, but once you get the hang of them, they're really good tools. They help communicate ideas clearly in an easy way to grasp and make it simple to find problems (if there are any).

First off, an 'argument' isn't an argument in the same way as a shouting boyfriend and girlfriend disagreeing on who's turn it is to wash the dishes is. A philosophical argument is like a theory which is backed up by reasons to think that the theory is true.

Here's one that's a theist favourite: The Kalam Cosmological Argument, as made famous by William Lane Craig.

P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe has a cause.

The 'P's are called premises. The 'C' is the conclusion.

There are two things to think about when working with one of these arguments.
First we look at whether the argument is sound or valid. This means that we have to figure out if the C is what definitely follows if the Ps are true. It's a bit like maths. Does P1+P2=C in the same way that 2+2=4? That's not algebra, that's just figuring out the logic of the argument.

Mr. Tree Shows Us How Irrefutable The Kalam Cosmological Argument Is

So one of the regulars decided that the best way to defeat theism would be to try and show how its best arguments don't work. Actually that makes sense! Find out what it is we actually believe and what evidence we use, and show how it is wrong. Good work Mr. Tree! Now you're working on our level!
Let's see how well he does.

Mr. Tree on this occasion has put together his explanation for why the Kalam Cosmological Argument fails.

 

It's great that he has no problem with P1. We're already agreeing on half the premises. So it's only P2 where there's disagreement.

2&3: Relies on equivocation, what do we rightly mean by ‘the universe’. The original arguments from which this is derived did not restrict themselves to asking “where did the universe that sprang from the big bang come from”. The ancient philosophers were asking where the world came from and working back towards the cause of all things, the universe, the totality of existence, reality.

Whatever the ancient people who used similar logic to the KCA were talking about is completely irrelevant to what we're talking about today. We might have taken some inspiration from them, but things have changed and we use the argument in its modern form.
If you're worried about definitions, then it's simple and it's no secret what we mean by the word 'universe'. We mean this space/time thing that started at the Big Bang, is expanding, and will die out in a heat death.
So no... there is no equivocation. We don't say 'universe' when we mean whatever the ancients were talking about.