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.

Quick Answers to Problems of Evil and Suffering

I'm responding to these assuming you're not familiar with some of the things I'm saying, so apologies if it seems patronising. I'm also going to try and be brief, so there might be some skimmed details.

If God is good, why is there Hell? Infinite punishment for a finite crime.

I imagine you have a particular something in mind when you say 'Hell'. The movies tend to use the medieval imagery of fire and brimstone with goat legged devils with pitchforks tormenting sinners day and night.
That's just not what the Bible teaches.
I personally am an annihilationist, which means I believe that when the time comes, God will bring the saved to the new Heaven and Earth, and the unsaved will cease to exist - much like how atheists think they will end up anyway.
But I think the most common belief among Christians is that Hell is a prison locked from the inside. God gives everyone a choice of whether or not to be with him and follow him. It's not a case of follow and love me or be punished, it's follow me or do what you want without me.
But the outcome of that is by your own free choice, you will have to live somewhere that God has closed off to himself. And that place will naturally be really awful, seeing as God is the source of goodness. He doesn't want you to go there, but if you choose to go there, he won't stop you.

If God is good, why does he let people die and suffer? And all these disasters happen?

What proof or evidence is there for the claim: 'God does not exist?' Round 2

Sometimes, just for fun, I will see what the atheists of the internet have to offer the discussion about the existence of God.

It's a simple challenge. I ask atheists to present any evidence or argument that supports the claim 'there is no god'.
It started out as a simple request, but over time I've had to add little notes to the question to try and stop heaps of irrelevant comments. Many still ignore the notes but that just goes to show me that they're not really engaging the simple question, and probably rarely do.

Here's a link to some previous responses.

Anyway, after a recent attempt, here are some of the lame answers I received.

This was the original post:

Notice how I make a point of saying this isn't about the definition of 'atheism' because I know that's a stumbling block for many. I make it clear that I'm asking about the statement 'there is no god'.

And here come the responses!
 

Zero evidence for a deity is there? Then what's all this stuff about cosmological arguments, indisputable facts about the life of Jesus, objective morality, and signs of design? Off to a bad start there with your completely wrong statement. They do say start every speech with a joke...

Right And Wrong Means God Exists - The Moral Argument

This here is the Moral Argument for God's Existence:

P1: If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
P2: Objective moral values exist.
C: Therefore God exists.

It's a nice straight forward one. It's easy to see that P1+P2=C if they're both true.
So the question is, are P1 and P2 true?

The short answer is yes. But let's look closer anyway.

If Bad Things Happen To Good People Then God Does Not Exist

You might have heard something like this being said by non-believers. Something like it, I haven't actually heard it put the way it is in the title, but it amounts to about the same.

I'll sketch out the basics here as to why 'the problem of evil' is one of the worst objections to believing in God. (Aside from it having been covered to death by loads of philosophers all through the ages, starting with debate in the Book of Job).

The classic Problem of Evil goes a little like this:
P1) If an all-loving, all powerful being exists, it would destroy evil.
P2) Evil exists.
C) Therefore an all-loving, all powerful being doesn't exist.

Argument From The Balance Of Evidence

Philosophers best arguments are usually put together in the form of premises that lead to an inescapable conclusion. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true.

They look like this:

P1: All fire engines are red.
P2: Kevin is a fire engine.
C: Kevin is red.

If both of those premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. There's no way out.

So, here's an argument I'm throwing out. Judge for yourself.

P1: There is no evidence or sound argument for the truth of atheism.
P2: There is lots of evidence for God's existence.
C: God exists.

You know what? I actually don't think the conclusion necessarily follows, there's a hidden premise somewhere, but there's definitely something to this.

Proof that God exists

They say that you can't prove it.

I think 'they' are the people that either don't want it, or haven't thought about it that much.

It's basically a simple process of elimination.

First off. What do we know?

We exist. So what's the reason for that? How did that come about?

We are a part of this universe. If we have the universe, then whatever the explanation for us in particular is comes after that, so it's kind of a secondary question. We need the universe before we can get to us, so it's a reasonable place to start.

So how did the universe come about? Either it existed forever, or it began to exist at some point. Those are the two options.

Big Bang Theory, expansion of the universe, entropy - essentially all of the evidence in cosmology says that the universe we live in began to exist at some point around 13.8 billion years ago. So that answers that.

So we now again have two possible options for where the universe came from. Either it came from nothing, or it came from something.

If we think about it as a maths thing, then nothing is equal to 0. Something could be 1, it could be 3, it could be seven billion three thousand and twelve. Something could be anything.

If we have nothing then the options are: 0+0=0 or 0x0=0 or 0-0=0
'Nothing' has no abilities, no aspirations, no traits, no potential. Essentially, nothing will only ever amount to nothing.
Seeing as we have something (a universe), we must have started with something.
Even if it was '1', perhaps that '1' has the potential to reproduce, so 1+1 would be 2, 2+1=3 and so on.
If the '1' wasn't able to reproduce other possibilities are open to it. 1 could possibly divide itself. So instead of a 1, you could have two halves, each less than the whole, but still at least having come from somewhere. So perhaps our planet is one billionth of a percent of that original '1'.
At this stage of the train of thought we still don't know what that '1' was, or even if it was '1', but we at least know it makes sense while '0' doesn't.

Cosmologists and physicists seem to be pretty much in agreement about this. Because they realise the universe must have come from somewhere, some of them are offering up the possibility that our universe is just one of many. So when we talk about a universe, we mean a closed system that begins with a Big Bang, expands, and finally dies a heat death. So if there is one, or several, they exist within a bigger cosmos.
Each universe begins and ends, but the cosmos itself could possibly be something that exists forever (because scientific method can't tell us anything about it).

So let's try and figure out what the cosmos could be.

Big Bang theory tells us that space, time, and matter (the stuff that everything is made of - elements, chemicals, energy, all that) all began to exist at that point several billion years ago. That means it did not exist before then.

So the cosmos simply must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial - because those things didn't exist.
The cosmos must be eternally existing for the reasons covered in the maths bit above. If there was ever 0, there still would only be 0, but as there is something then something must have always been there. The first thing to exist must have been there without beginning, otherwise there would have been nothing before it. It also makes sense that it has no end, because a thing that has existed for eternity, but had a lifespan, would have had eternity to live and die already well before it got around to creating a universe.

So immediately our 'something' that the universe came from has a few necessary traits: eternal, outside of space, and not made of anything found solely in a universe.

We can add 'power' to that list. This thing somehow caused a spark that made the universe (or each universe) begin expanding and growing into stars and planets and galaxies that began sprouting plants and bees and lions.

So what kind of things do we know about that might fit the description? Things that exist in no material form, that exist eternally, potentially can exist outside of our space, and have creative power.
The only examples I'm aware of that come close are natural laws, numbers, concepts, and ideas.

All of those examples only have three of those traits, but no creative power.
Concepts and ideas are created products of a conscious mind. Laws require a lawgiver.

Essentially we have whittled down the only possibility to an immaterial, eternal, powerful, spaceless, conscious mind.
As a conscious mind you can add 'intelligence' to the list of traits - it would have to be pretty clever to know how to create a universe.
You can also add 'free agent' to it. If this thing was just a machine, it would have churned out our universe an infinity ago and everything would already have been destroyed in the heat death. Machines pump stuff out as long as they have fuel to do it, but things that are capable of choosing do it when they decide to, and this thing seems to have chosen to wait.

So our list of traits for what the 'something' was that created the universe is now: spaceless, eternal, immaterial, powerful, creative, intelligent, and free willed.

If that isn't the most basic description of a god, I don't know what is.

So to quickly sum it up:

1. The universe (space, time, matter) began to exist.
2. All things that begin to exist have to come from somewhere.
3. That somewhere can't be made of the stuff that doesn't exist yet.
4. That somewhere must then be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.
5. Only laws, numbers, and ideas are known for certain to have those properties.
6. Ideas require a mind and laws require a lawgiver. So if they exist, then a conscious intelligent mind must exist to provide them. A conscious mind could potentially be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.
7. An intelligent, conscious mind that exists eternally, is immaterial, outside of space, has the power to create universes, and freely chooses to do so, is the most straight forward definition of a god.

Dumb Questions To Ask At This Stage

So if God created the universe, what created God?

Remember that word 'eternal'? That means 'without beginning or end'. Eternal things don't get created.
You're thinking of 'immortal', which is 'immune to death', but could still have a beginning like a vampire, or a false deity...

How does this prove that Jesus is the son of God?

It doesn't...  it doesn't even try to. It doesn't intend to. Jesus does not come into the equation here at all. Who mentioned Jesus? I didn't.

So which God is it? Zeus, Thor, Osiris, The Spaghetti Monster?

From this proof? We don't know exactly. All this proves is that there is a God and he/she/it has all these traits.
Although... Zeus, Thor, Osiris, and The Spaghetti Monster don't share these traits, so we can actually rule them out. Best thing to do is read up on a few possible gods and find out which one matches the evidence.