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We are super excited to kickoff another year of Reasonable Faith at UTD starting next week!

If you are interested in learning more about the club, I will give an overview of the club and share details of what events we have planned for the first two weeks! This post is a bit long so check out the bold sections for the most important parts.

What is Reasonable Faith UTD?

Reasonable Faith UTD is a Christian Apologetics club. We exist to provide a safe and constructive atmosphere at UTD to learn, explore, and discuss evidence for God and Christianity. We also seek to create a community open to everyone from all backgrounds and beliefs to have deeper disucssions so we invite you to come even if you completely disagree with Christianity! We expect anyone who wants to participate in our meetings to be respectful towards others and their beliefs.

Each week, we invite a speaker to give a presentation of some argument for the existence of God or trustworthiness of Christinaity. They will present for roughly an hour followed by about twenty minutes of Q&A. After the official meeting is finished, folks will hangout to continue discussions and hangout afterwards. Here are some previous topics we have gone over as a sample of what we might talk about on a given week.

• Is the Bible historically reliable?
• Is there evidence for the soul?
• Can all religions be true?
• Did the universe need God to begin?

How can I get involved?

We will have meetings every Thursday at the SSA 12.471 at 7pm. NOT for the first two weeks! We are still working out the location for those first two meetings. Check out our Twitter (@RFUpdatesUTD), Instagram (@ReasonableFaithUTD) or website for updates.

We will be having a special event called Board Games and Boba Saturday evening August 27th. Location TBD but it will most likely be at the Comet Cafe in the Student Union. Check out our social media for updates.

Finally, outside of our weekly meetings, we plan on having social / discussion events the first Saturday of every month. Our first event will be Pancakes and Pontificating will be Saturday September 3rd where we meet at a diner like IHOP, eat pancakes and pontificate on whatever questions you have in mind! If you ever have had any questions related to issues of God / Christianity / Religion, we encourage you to bring them here! We will have a wide variety of opinions represented and we hope to provide some constructive discussion on these questions. Check our social media for updates!

Thanks for checking out our website! We hope to see you at one of our meetings!

We hope everyone’s semester has been going well!!

Here’s a quick update on what events we have in the month of March!

First, we will continue to have weekly Reasonable Faith meetings (Except for March 17th because of spring break).

Second, we will have a debate watching night March 5th! We will be meeting on campass and food will be provided. Check the Discord for exact details.

Third, we have tentative plans to have another Pancakes & Pontificating on the last Saturday of March the 26th.

We are looking forward to kicking off another semester of Reasonable Faith next week! If you are new to the club or a long time member, I wanted to share here some details about the exciting events and speakers we have coming up!! We also have a google calendar linked at reasonablefaithutd.org/schedule which also lists all of these and future events/meetings.

Our main way of communication is through our Discord. Speak to an officer at one of our weekly meetings or send an email through our UTD Presence Page to get connected!

Thursday Night Meetings:
Jan 20 – I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist – Dr. Frank Turek – 8pm HH 2.402
Jan 27 – Against the Tide movie then Q&A – Dr. Mike Strauss – 7pm SSA 14.244
Feb 3 – Is Origin of Life Evidence for Intelligent Design – Allen Hainline – 7pm SSA 12.471
Feb 10 – Is the Origin of Life Evidence for Intelligent Design? (Continued) – Allen Hainline – 7pm HH 2.402

Outreach / Game Nights (Check Discord for Location):
Jan 21 – Outdoor Game Night
Jan 23 – The Chosen Movie Night
Jan 26 – Virtual Game Night
Jan 29 – Pancakes and Pontificating

Join us this Thursday at 7 p.m. in SSA 12.471 to hear from a special guest speaker Devin Squeri as he shares his story of going through serious doubts about God. Devin will share his experience of doubts and some examples of issues that originally seemed problematic but for which he eventually found satisfying answers. For example, the issue of whether the Jesus story was a copycat of various earlier pagan myths.

We want our group to be a welcoming place where people can openly share doubts without feeling like anyone is looking down on them. In fact, Devin and Allen are planning to start a You Tube channel called The Doubt Project to try to help people find helpful information to work through troubling doubts.

Also! If you’re interested but unable to attend, catch our Facebook livestream this week!

Hey all! Sorry I missed last week with the updates! I hope midterms and exams have been going well! Shout out to Hayden and Sara for putting on our Halloween hangout this last Saturday!!!

This upcoming week we are excited to have our very own Allen Hainline presenting on the Problem of Evil (Often rephrased as the question: How can a good God allow evil to happen?). This argument is perhaps one of the biggest challenges raised against the existence of God and deserves a satistying response. Join us this week to learn more about how to think through this argument!!

Since this topic is more philosophical, it made me think of a wonderful resource to share with you on all things philosophy related: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html). I highly encourage any of y’all check it out!

Quick update this week! Our very own Allen Hainline will be presenting the Fine-Tuning argument tonight! Since I am late to getting this weekly update out, I will go ahead and preview our topic one week from today!

Next week, we are excited to welcome New Testament Scholar Dr. Justin Bass to discuss the Exlusivity and Uniqueness of Jesus. We are also excited to be partnering with the campus ministry FOCUS for this event! We will be in a different room: SLC 1.102!

Dr. Bass recieved his ThM and PhD from Dallas Theological Seminary and taught at multiple seminaries on the New Testament. He has written a book The Bedrock of Christianity on the historicity of Jesus’ death and resurection and has also engaged with other top New Testament scholars including debating with Dr. Bart Erhman! Check out his website at justinwbass.com to learn more.

To preview the topic, the exclusivity of Jesus refers to whether Jesus is the only way to be saved while the uniqueness of Jesus refers to whether there is anything about Jesus that makes him any different than what other religions believe. We hope you can join us on the 21st to learn about and engage with this crucial topic!

I hope exams have been going well! Keep up the good work and hope to see y’all at our meetings!!

Three quick points this week!

First, we have a booth at the SU from 12-2pm every Wednesday throughout October starting the 6th This is a great time to meet folks and start deeper discussions (If you are already part of the club!) and learn more about the club (If you are interested in joining!). Come by and say hi!

Second, we will be having a joint event with UTD FOCUS on the 21st when our guest speaker Dr. Justin Bass (New Testament scholar) comes and speaks about the exclusivity and uniqueness of Jesus! Location TBD.

Third, we have finished our mini-series on the historicity of the Bible and are excited to welcome back apologist and speaker Beau Bishop to give a more philosophical talk on arguments for the soul this week!

Hope y’alls week has been going well! Keep up the good work!

– James Boyer

Hey all! I wanted to write a quick post to provide an update on Reasonable Faith Semester and what is coming up! I forgot to get around to posting last week but I have two exciting items to share with you now! At the end of this post, I also have some thoughts on why you should be exploring Christianity!

First, we have a new event called Pancakes and Pontificating!!! It will be this upcoming Saturday at 7pm at the IHOP located at 933 N Central Expy, Plano, TX 75075 (If you need a ride, just let us know at the Thursday meeting or on Discord!). This will be a time to fellowship and more specifically to spend time dicussing questions y’all have related to Christianity, Apologetics and related topics. We look forward to seeing you there!

Second, we are finally going to be in our normal meeting room at our normal meeting time for the rest of the semester!!!!!! As a quick refresher in case you don’t have it memorized already, that is SSA 12.471 at 7pm on Thursdays. Be sure to join us this week we will be continuing our mini-series on evidence for the Bible!

One final thought I wanted to share with you are my two cents on why Reasonable Faith at UTD matters and why you should be exploring evidence for Christianity.

First cent :), Philosopher and Mathematician Blaise Pascal gave a famous argument known today as Pascal’s Wager. The argument goes that the stakes of believing in God (Or not!) are extremely high if God actually exists (Heaven or Hell!). In contrast, if God doesn’t exist, then it doesn’t really matter whether or not you chose to believe in him. Pascal argues that on these grounds you should believe in God. This is not my choice argument for why you should believe in God BUT I do think a slight modification has absolute relevance for why you should be exploring Christianity!

Second cent, if we rethink his argument to be about the importance of knowing which faith is true (if any), then the argument can be seen as a compelling case for spending your time and energy into seeing whether a specific religion is true. The stakes are too high for you not to have looked into the evidence behind Christianity! If Christianity is true, then it offers an unbelieveable opportunity to know God himself and the amazing revelation that God loves you! And to complete the argument, there is little to be lost by spending some of your life looking into the evidence of Christianity and it turns out to be false (Though I hope and anticipate you will not find that to be the case!).

I hope exams are going well and reach out on the Discord if you are interested in discussing anything shared here or in previous meetings!

– James Boyer

Hope your first couple weeks of classes have gone well (And hopefully also the assignments/tests from those classes)!

Join us this Thursday at 7:30pm to hear from UT Austin PhD astrophysicist Dr. Sarah Salviander and learn her story from athiesm to Christianity due largely in part to the compelling evidence for God she found through her scientific work. We will also hear how Genesis is consistent with modern science and presented several scientific truths that couldn’t have been humanly known at the time.

Note that this meeting is at 7:30pm and not our normal meeting time of 7:00pm. This meeting is also in the main lecture hall in the library MC 2.410.

Learn more about Dr. Salviander at her website: sarahsalviander.com

Hope you all had a relaxing Labor Day weekend! I’m very excited to be writing this post because this week we are finally meeting at our normal room!! Aside from our special speaker next week (September 16th at the Library), we will be meeting in SSA 12.471 at 7pm for the rest of the semester! Photos of the building and room location listed below. Join us this week to learn discuss about what it means to find truth about God as well as how to deal with doubts. We will also be hearing from a few of our members about their journeys with God and Christianity. Looking forward to seeing you!

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