Evidence for God- Houston TX Chapter

Evidences for God- Houston Chapter meeting
Saturday, March 14. 9 AM – 11am
Zoom link available on request

Does the evidence from the natural creation point to a young Earth or an Old Earth?

Steve Mitchell will present a talk showing the Failure of the “Top 10 Evidences for a YE from Science”, though time may not permit covering all.
• Is there not enough sediment on the ocean floor?
• Do bent (folded) rocks show that geology acted quickly?
• Does the discovery of soft tissue fragments in dinosaur bones mean that they died in Noah’s flood?
• Does the decaying of the Earth’s magnetic field mean that the Earth cannot be billions of years old?
• Does carbon-14 reported in fossils and diamonds mean they are just a few thousand years old?
And more

The Sciences were developed by Christians. That includes geology. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16v7en69Uc/

Is the Present the Key to the Past? A Response to Ken Ham’s Rewriting of Geological History Ken Ham’s recent Facebook post distorts geological history, claiming it stems from atheism. In reality, pivotal geologists like Steno and Cuvier were devout Christians dedicated to God’s crea…

This should be an exciting discussion:

Humans: Designed or Descended? Are humans simply another branch on the primate tree . . . or something truly exceptional? Join RTB scholar Dr. Fazale “Fuz” Rana and biological anthropology...

Don't Miss This!
Our speaker will be our own Roy Brown. Roy’s topic will be: “The Importance of Egypt in the Bible”.
Abstract: The most important country in the Bible after Israel and Judah is Egypt. Perhaps more than any other land mentioned in the Bible, Egypt has left a massive record of events, culture, and beliefs in many paintings, reliefs, inscriptions, and other evidence accumulated over a period of several thousand years. This presentation will use this massive record from Egypt to demonstrate visually how it can be used to better understand, illuminate, and demonstrate the reliability of several Bible passages.
Otis Graf also will be sharing insight into his faith journey. Otis is a member of the RTB scholar community. As an aerospace engineer, he worked with NASA helping with lunar landings and the Space Shuttle program before joining IBM. He is retired and we look forward to hearing his perspective on science and faith.

Moses found by Archaeology???

Evidence for Moses and the Exodus from the actual time that he lived is so limited that many scholars do not believe that he lived, let alone was like the Bible stories. Perhaps this changes, based on a new claim that an ancient inscription actually names Moses. Israeli epigrapher, Michael Bar-Ron claims to have identified just that. It will be quite a while before we will be able to point to this with confidence. A lot of scholarly work will be needed to evaluate this claim. Nevertheless, it is really interesting that this could be true. It also demonstrates that just one verified archaeological discovery could quickly overturn all of the skeptic’s objections to the Biblical accounts. Arguments from silence are always of limited value. We should recognize that it will always require faith to believe that the miracles in the Bible occurred, but new discoveries mean that we can have increased confidence in their historic setting.

Oldest written reference to Moses may be revealed in ancient Egyptian desert inscriptions, researcher says American-Israeli epigraphist interprets ancient inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim that could be the oldest written mention of Moses, predating the Bible by centuries.

Check this out. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250730030404.htm
Many of us think that the Big Bang was the creation event described in Genesis 1:1... a direct miracle. They say, "The new model does not rely on hypothetical fields or particles such as inflation. It suggests that natural quantum fluctuations in space-time, gravitational waves, were sufficient to seed the small density differences that eventually gave rise to galaxies, stars, and planets. These ripples evolve non-linearly, interacting and generating complexity over time, allowing for verifiable predictions with real data." It will be interesting to see how this develops. It still suggests the universe has a beginning and begs the question where would gravitational waves and quantum fluctuations come from and how fine tuned would they need to be to cause a universe that would allow for life?

How many earth-like planets are there? We know of one. Saying how many more depends on how many criteria it has to meet. If we are looking for a rocky planet at an appropriate distance from a star, then it also helps to know how large it is. If it is too large, then it is increasingly likely to be some form of water world… no land. They would be unlikely to have any of the environments that early forms of life might have found hospitable.

NASA and other astronomers believe that they have candidates, but how many? This article suggests that it is likely that they have overestimated the number that they have found. That means that the odds that any of these would actually meet any of the other criteria that would be clearly required for life to exist just went down.

Could any planet come to meet all of the criteria for advanced life by accident? That would require a lot of faith.

www.sci.news

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1305927684875149&set=a.127854136015849

For many years scholars have believed that the earliest clear reference to Jesus by a non-Christian was doctored to one degree or another. In a fresh scholarly look, Dr. T.C. Schmidt examined the quote from Josephus that many believe was tampered with to make more favorable to Jesus than it was originally. I watched an YouTube show where he was interviewed by Sean McDowell. He shows solid evidence that suggests that the entire quote is real. It is likely that one word was lost, suggesting that Josephus originally wrote that Jesus was thought to be the messiah, as opposed to that he was the messiah. Even this may not have been intentional.

Schmidt used computer databases that allowed him to find analogies in Josephus for every phrase in the key paragraph that reference Jesus, the “Testimonium Flavianum”. Every concern is addressed. This text is therefore confirmed to be a very early text from a person who knew well the views of Jesus’ enemies. Skeptics need to rethink their case.

https://jesusinhistoryandscience.com/?p=4373

Timelines tell the story: Part 3

Many skeptics claim that the New Testament Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were written late, perhaps in the 2nd century. That doesn’t hold up and a broad range of scholars from several perspectives agree that they were all written in the 1st century between approximately 50 AD to 90 AD.

I think they probably ranged from about 52 - 80 AD. Here are the important Keys:

1. The Book of Acts ends and was likely written in about 62 AD.

2. The Book of Luke was written shortly before this. (Perhaps 60 AD)

3. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source.

4. This suggests that Mark was in circulation for some time before Matthew and Luke were written.

5. Mark was a protégé of the Apostle Peter and to give time for this to have occurred, the gospel might have been written 52-55 AD

Regardless of the exact timing, these were written and widely circulated early. This was during a time when many witnesses were alive to have disputed their narratives.

Timelines tell the story: Part 2

This is another timeline that I put together to help me understand how the New Testament came to be. I know that it is busy, but I think it is worth your taking a few minutes to work through it. As J. Warner Wallace puts it, you can think of this as a chain of custody for the NT. On the left, from the first century are some of the writers of the NT and when they wrote. These represent the primary records.

Next are a group of believers (orange boxes) who represent the next generations who were responsible for taking what was passed to them and passing it along to those that followed. These were the Apostolic fathers who passed along the writings and teachings of Christ’s apostles. God chose to guide humans in deciding what writings He wanted to be in the Bible, and it was not always simple and obvious. The apostolic fathers were all different and emphasized different parts, but believed in the core of the gospel. They each played a part in preserving the NT for us.

In the grey and blue boxes are some of the heresies that were faced by these early believers. The very things that the heretics affirmed and rejected helps to show validity of the Biblical accounts.

I also added in yellow boxes some of the recent archaeological finds that show how orthodox Christianity was believed in early times. Claims that Christianity was created late have a lot to go explain in a very small time.