Five reasons to believe in God
“So give me five good reasons why you believe in God.” It was like so many of the conversations Dave and I had as we hung out in the library at university. This was a good question and I can’t remember exactly what I answered back then. But if Dave were here today this is what I would day to him.
First of all there is the moral argument. You see we all seem to have this sense of right and fair hard-wired into our beings. We all seem to have an awareness of objective values that we perceive apply to everyone. Take for example the heroic act of sacrificing oneself for strangers. This can’t be explained by evolutionary principles because evolution would lead us to the preservation of our own over the outsiders. In fact in the early years of the last century several great thinkers suggested that we should eliminate the capacity for inferior people to reproduce — Hitler was not the only one.
On the other hand, as a Christian I believe I can explain this universal sense of morality because God gave us an internal awareness of his moral laws (See Romans 2:14-15).
You can be moral without believing in God but the fact that we have morals suggests that there is a God.
The second argument comes from the Cosmos. Our scientific approach to life is based on the idea that everything in our material world has a cause. Yet since Hubble and the “Big Bang Theory” we have come to accept that the space is expanding and that if we could roll back the clock we could return to a point where everything that is in our material universe was compacted into the size of an atom. Because this first explosion needed a cause we must assume that there is a nonmaterial, rational entity beyond our universe. Jesus described this non-material rational entity as God the Father who is pure Spirit (see John 4:24).
The third reason would be Rational Complexity Argument. In every science from biology to astronomy we are discovering a great and precise complexity to our lives and the universe. From DNA and genomes to the finetuning of the universe there is a rational complexity to all that we discover. This suggests intelligent design from and intelligent designer. Once again we are left with God as a reasonable explanation to the question of who or what is behind it all.
My fourth argument would be to try to account for the appearance, life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Apart from the existence of God the events of this man’s life and its influence on the world does not make sense. I invite you to explore this one.
My last argument would be a personal story of a young man who was raised to believe in God. Who came through a time of doubt and trial to be changed in a deep way by a real presence that is still tangible is some nonmaterial way in his life to this day. The last argument is my personal story.
Briefly these are my five best reasons for believing in God. I hope they are helpful to you.
Rev. John Dunnett is minister at First Baptist Church in New Glasgow.