God is spirit, though how you define that exactly, I don't know.
Don't you think that you ought to be able to define something before you purport to believe in that something? Otherwise what is it that you claim to believe in and how do you know?
Should I need to be able to define "what constitutes the form of God"? If so, why? God is not flesh and blood, atoms and molecules like us, but I don't have to be able to describe his "form". It would be great to be able to do so, but there is the fact that if I, of finite human mind, were able to fully describe him, he would not be truly God.
So your belief in God is based on a book and your 'infallible' logic?
No.
The 'no' answer requires a clarification of why you do believe. Pretty please 
That's getting rather off topic, but here you go.
Why should I believe in God?
It is often assumed, by Christians as well as non-Christians, that there are no concrete reasons for believing that God exists. Christianity has suffered from a reliance on feelings or “just having faith” for about a century. However, there are good reasons to believe in God’s existence.
Notes:
1) Believing in God is more than just believing he exists; it is trusting him, though to do that you need to believe he exists. Do you believe in Ed Milliband? Nick Clegg? David Cameron?
2) Such believing in God requires more than an intellectual assent, something more than just accepting evidence. Whether we put our trust in him is very much bound up with our response to him telling us we are sinners. Do we respond to that by accepting it or rejecting it?
3) None of the items below are an argument against biological evolution.
Six Reasons to Believe in God (for a Christian) and Five Reasons to Believe in God (for an atheist):
1) Argument from contingency (Leibnitz’s argument).
2) Kalam cosmological argument.
3) Argument from design.
4) Argument from objective morals.
5) The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
6) The internal witness of the Holy Spirit (Christians only).
These arguments are based on those put forward by Dr. William Lane Craig who has a really good website at
www.reasonablefaith.org.
Please note that some of this may well be over your head. If so, please stick with it. Even if it does not all sink it, it may show you that there are some carefully thought out arguments that exist which some people understand and which they believe to give good reasons to believe God exists.
Stuff in grey boxes is heavy stuff
1) Argument from contingency (Leibnitz’s argument)
This is the most complicated argument we will be looking at, i.e. it gets easier after this one, but this one needs to be looked at first.
a) Every thing has an explanation of its existence either in the necessity of its own nature (it has to exist) or in an external cause.
i. Science is built on the fact that things are caused by other things. They are brought into existence by other things, e.g. babies, cars and planets.
ii. Some things, e.g. numbers, are believed by mathematicians to “just exist”. They don’t exist in time and nothing caused them according to mathematicians.
b) If the universe has an explanation of its existence, God exists and is that explanation.
i. This is logically equivalent to an argument often put forward by atheists that if (since) God does not exist, the universe has no explanation.
If the statement
“If God does not exist, the universe does not have an explanation of its existence.”
is true then
“If the universe does have an explanation of its existence God does exist.”
is also true.
If proposition P implies conclusion Q then Not Q implies Not P, i.e. if Q is not actually true, then P cannot be either.
Since all men are mortal, the proposition “If Alan is a man, Alan is mortal” is true. In that case “If Alan is not mortal, then Alan is not a man” is also true. Note that you have to have it this way round, i.e. “If Alan is not a man, Alan is not mortal” does not hold; Alan might be a horse and thus still be mortal.
c) The universe exists.
d) Conclusion: From a) and c), therefore the universe has an explanation of its existence.
e) Conclusion: From d) and b), therefore the explanation of the universe is God.
f) Conclusion: From e), therefore God exists.
Analysing this conclusion, God has to exist; he cannot not exist; he is a “necessary being”.
2) Kalam cosmological argument
Originated from Christian philosophers at least as far back as John Philopanos (529AD), but developed by Islam scholars (Al-Ghazali).
a) Every thing which begins to exist has a cause.
b) The universe began to exist.
c) Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Notes:
i. The universe cannot be infinitely old. There are two mathematical arguments for this, i.e. the impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite series of things in reality (e.g. Hilbert’s hotel) and the impossibility of creating an actual infinite by adding to an existing number of things.
ii. The beginning of the universe means a beginning from nothing. The posh phrase for this is “Creation ex nihilo”. This point was the point where matter, energy, space and time came into being. Thus there was no time before this beginning and thus it does not make sense to talk of “before the beginning of the universe”. There was no “before”.
iii. Mainstream science teaches that the universe came into being about 13.7 billion years ago from nothing. Over the last 80 years there have been numerous attempts to disprove this, but none have succeeded. In 2003 came a proof that even if there were previous universes there were a finite number (Borde, Guth and Vilenkin), so there must have been an absolute start at some point.
There have been lots of different attempts do away with the beginning of the universe, but all have been disproved or do not do away with a beginning somewhere in the finite past. All remaining explanations are covered by the Borde, Guth and Vilenkin proof. These three men are not Christians so this is not some Christian conspiracy. Note Vilenkin’s words in the book "Many worlds in One" where he wrote, "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning."
iv. Since time and space, matter and energy came into existence at this beginning, the cause of the universe, whom we identify as God, cannot be made out of matter or be “in” time. Thus, he must be non-material, timeless, immensely powerful and, from the argument from contingency, cannot not exist.
An additional characteristic of this cause of the universe might be understood. Though God is timeless (at least without the universe), he still created time. It is difficult to understand how a timeless being can create stuff to do with time (temporal events). With physical causes, effects follow in time from their causes. Thus if some water has been below 0°C for all eternity, it will have been frozen for all eternity. Somehow the timeless cause of the universe caused events to take place and it has been argued that this can only have been if the cause of the universe was a personal agent (a person) who was acting freely. Deep stuff…
3) Argument from Design
The requirements for the universe to be able to sustain intelligent life are astronomically complex. These include the laws of nature and certain amounts of stuff in the universe, e.g. the amount of matter and the strength of certain forces.
a) There are only three ways that have been put forward for these requirements, i.e. chance, by physical laws or design.
b) The chances that the universe would have them by chance is infinitesimally small.
c) The laws of nature cannot cause the laws of nature.
d) Therefore, it must have come about by design.
Some people say that even if the chance of everything being suitable for life being extremely slim then that must just be how it happened. We should not be surprised to see a universe suitable for intelligent life; if it wasn’t we wouldn’t be here to see it. They argue, by analogy, that the chances of one individual person winning the lottery is extremely slim, but someone has to win it. However, this is not a true comparison. A better comparison would be surviving a firing squad. There is a chance of surviving it due to everyone missing with their shot by accident, but a much better explanation would be that everyone intended to miss, i.e. it was by design.
For details of the fine-tuning, see Appendix 1.
4) Argument from Objective Morality
A logical atheist argument is that if God does not exist and has therefore not in any way designed the universe then, then as Richard Dawkins says, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” If God does not exist then man is no better or no worse than any other animal and has no more rights or responsibilities than any other animal. According to mainstream science (cosmology), the universe will continue to expand forever and ever and all life will die out. Even stars and planets will disintegrate and the very atoms themselves will eventually disintegrate. Why then should we bother to do anything when the end result will be exactly the same eventually? Why should we make sacrifices for anyone when they and we will die and that will be the end of it? This is a depressing thought, but if we are to avoid being ruled by our emotions and instead look at things logically, the question has to be asked and answered.
However, do we not all agree that, say, torturing a child just for fun is wrong and would still be so even if no-one believed it to be wrong? Surely the Holocaust would have still been morally wrong even if the Nazis had won and been able to convince everyone they were right (or had killed anyone who disagreed). Without God there is no proper basis for such morality (it would be just something on which there was common consent), but since God does exist our morality is based on his nature (love, justice, etc.).
“Objective morality” means that something is valid and binding on us irrespective of how many people believe an action or a value to be so.
If God does not exist, objective morality does not exist.
1. Objective morality does exist.
2. Conclusion: Therefore, God does exist.
Notes:
i) This is not to deny the fact that it is often hard to determine what is the right thing to do morally. However, just as it is hard to determine certain scientific facts does not mean they are not objective facts, finding it hard to determine what is morally right or wrong does not mean morality is not objective.
5) The Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Note:
1. This does not require you to believe that the New Testament is inspired by God. It is only necessary to treat that the New Testament documents like any other historical set of documents. Note that we have far more New Testament documents than any other historical documents from that era than any other documents.
2. New Testament scholars are very largely agreed that Jesus was crucified, died and was buried by Joseph of Arimathea.
3. Sometime atheists argue that dead men don’t come back to life again. However, this is a red herring. Christians know this as well as anyone else, but this not the Christian claim, which is that God raised Jesus from the dead. If God does exist and Jesus was who he said he was, then it is highly probable that God would confirm this by raising Jesus from the dead.
4. Atheists often argue that such a miracle would “break the laws of nature”. However, the “laws of nature” are a description of the ways things operate unless God decides otherwise. God would not be breaking any law.
Things which need explaining:
a) The tomb was empty.
b) Jesus disciples saw appearances of Jesus.
c) The origin of the Christian faith.
A. The tomb was empty. Options:
i) The women and the other disciples looked in the wrong tomb.However
a. The authorities could have easily have pointed to the correct tomb, complete with Jesus’ dead body.
ii) The disciples stole the body.
a. Some (nearly all?) of the apostles went on to die for their belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead. James, Jesus’ half brother, who had not believed in him before the resurrection also died for this belief. Would you give your life for the belief that your own brother was the Son of God, whom God raised from the dead?
iii) The tomb really was empty.
B. Jesus disciples saw appearances of Jesus. Options:
i) The disciples were hallucinating. However
a. Jesus was seen on lots of different occasions over 40 days, e.g. Mary at the tomb, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, in a room (without Thomas), in a room (with Thomas), in Galilee cooking breakfast, by 500 people at once.
b. The disciples were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead, despite being told it would happen.
c. Jewish belief precluded such resurrection.
ii) Jesus hadn’t really died. However
a. Jesus had been flogged, crucified, stabbed with a spear, certified dead by professional executioners and placed in a guarded tomb with a stone over the entrance. Would Jesus really have been able to survive this and give the impression that he had been raised from the dead, that he was the Lord of life?
b. No atheist claiming Jesus didn’t really die has offered to show us how he managed it.
iii) People saw someone else and thought it was Jesus. However
a. Jesus’ body would still have been in the tomb.
b. Would the disciples all have made this mistake?
iv) God really did raise Jesus from the dead.
C. The origin of the Christian faith. Options:
i) The disciples were making it up
a. See above about apostles dying for their faith. Would they have died for something they knew to be wrong.
b. The accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul’s writings are independent of each other (unlike some other parts of these gospels).
ii) The disciples were confused or otherwise mistaken
a. It would have to be a real confusion to not notice whether Jesus had really healed people, raised the dead, been killed himself and been resurrected.
iii) Jesus really did die and really was raised from the dead by God.
6) The Internal Witness of the Holy Spirit (Christians only)
When a person becomes a follower of Jesus Christ, they are “indwelt” by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in us gives us an assurance that we are sons and daughters of God (Romans 8.15, 16 says, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.”). The Holy Spirit starts to change us, our desires and our actions.
Even if all the other arguments were not very strong, we would still have this witness from God himself.
Appendix 1 - JUST SIX NUMBERS
(Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, pages 2 & 3)
This book describes six numbers that now seem especially significant. Two of them relate to the basic forces; two fix the size and overall ‘texture’ of our universe and determine whether it will continue forever; and two more fix the properties of space itself:
• The cosmos is so vast because there is one critically huge number “N” in nature, equal to 1,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This number measures the strength of the electrical forces that hold atoms together, divided by the force of gravity between them. If “N” had a few less zeros, only a short-lived miniature universe could exist: no creatures could grow larger than insects, and there would be no time for biological evolution.
• Another number, , whose value is 0.007, defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen into all the atoms of the periodic table. Carbon and oxygen are common, whereas gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars. If were (less than) 0.006 or (greater than) 0.008, we could not exist.
• The cosmic number (omega) measures the amount of material in our universe — galaxies, (diffuse gas, and ‘dark matter’. tells us the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the universe. If this ratio were too high relative to a particular ‘critical’ value, the universe would have collapsed long ago; had it been too low no stars would have formed. The initial expansion speed seems to have been finely tuned.
• Measuring the fourth number, (lambda), was the biggest scientific news of 1998. An unsuspected new force — a cosmic ‘antigravity’ — controls the expansion of our universe, even though it has no discernible effect on scales less than a billion light-years. It is destined to become ever more dominant over gravity and other forces as our universe becomes ever darker and emptier. Fortunately for us (and very surprisingly to theorists), is very small. Otherwise its effect would have stopped galaxies and stars from forming, and cosmic evolution would have been stifled before it could even begin.
• The seeds for all cosmic structures — stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies — were all imprinted in the Big Bang. The fabric of our universe depends on one number, Q, which represents the ratio of two fundamental energies and is about 1/100,000 in value. If Q were even smaller, the universe would be inert and structureless; if Q were much larger, it would be a violent place, in which no stars or solar systems could survive, dominated by vast black holes.
• The sixth crucial number has been known for centuries, although it’s now viewed in a new perspective. It is the number of spatial dimensions in our world, D. and equals three. Life couldn’t exist if D were two or four. Time is a fourth dimension, but distinctively different from the others in that it has a built-in arrow: we ‘move’ only towards the future. Near black holes, space is so warped that light moves in circles, and time can stand still. Furthermore, close to the time of the Big Bang, and also on microscopic scales, space may reveal its deepest underlying structure of all: the vibrations and harmonies of objects called “superstrings”, in a ten-dimensional arena (actually found later to be eleven-dimensional).
