How do I tell my friends I don't want to do the Alpha course?

[BumperliciousVsTheDailyHate]

Some lovely friends of mine have just asked me and DH if we want to do the Alpha Course. I'm not completely adverse to it but I don't particularly want to at the moment for several reasons:

1. I work 9 hour days, and by the time I get done with dinner and putting 2 yo DD to bed I get about 2 hours before having to go bed, the last thing I want to do is go and be sociable, articulate and thoughtful
2. I'm an atheist, though I was into religion and church until I was a teen then got completely put off it after my mum dragged me a along to a born-again Christian church.
3. We couldn't get a babysitter, though I could go on my own, I just really don't want to
4. I don't think it would make me change how I feel, I don't want it to change how I feel, I am perfectly happy as an atheist. I think it would be a waste of time.

Can anyone help me let my friends down in a nice way, that doesn't belittle the way they feel. We have discussed religion, and they know how I feel. They are very strong in their beliefs and very up front about them, though not in a pressurising way. They are really lovely and I don't want to offend them but to be honest I struggle to muster up the energy to make conversation with my husband at the moment. But I need a better reason than 'I can't be bothered'. I'm not adverse to the Alpha Course per se, I have seen very good reviews on it, but it smacks a little of brain washing to me.

What do I say?

I often hear discussion from non-Christians about "the church" (whatever that is) and "Christians" (whatever that generalisation means). Yes of course the church isn't perfect, it's made up of human beings who recognise how imperfect we are. But instead of looking at all us faulty human beings, what do you all think about Jesus and his priorities?

'Woo' is a good comprehensive term for 'all supernatural stuff and things that have been repeatedly shown to be unprovable ie all the big cults with the big PR machines, spiritualism, and homeopathy, pixie-pokers, aura readers and the rest.'

excuse me: it was "mental"

or should I say, excuse you

"fucking ludicrous bollocks and crap"

what a joke

Gees, this really took off from just, 'No, thanks, I'm not interested.'

No joke, she's quite serious I think.

One of my inconvenient beliefs is free speech

who doesn't believe in free speech?

am I not allowed to say it's a joke?

oh I see

i stood on my dignity there and stubbed my toe

I must remember that one

But there you see, UQD, you are putting belief in all forms down to irrationality. To me it's as rational as unbelief is to you. Can God be disproved? No, much as God cannot be proven. Therefore in some sense unbelief is as irrational as belief. So I can use woo as I like :D

But that presumes I demand "proof". I've never got into demanding "proof" for the very reason you cite. Evidence, on the other hand, is another matter.

You can't prove there isn't a giant invisible pink gerbil called Kevin in my garden shed. But you can amass a certain amount of convincing evidence that there isn't.

Get it now?

My "mental" comment in context - if you go back and look it is what I thought, privately (and did not say) while attending a "healing" ceremony. Because of all the people getting up and claiming to be "healed" when, in fact, nothing of the sort was happening. And if these people had been medically checked both before and after the service, that would have been evident.

Yes, unfortunately it can be like that sometimes, UQD, but healings really do happen, I have seen and experienced them personally.
You just made me splutter my coffee over the screen at Kevin the pink gerbil
Yes, I do get what you're saying. But Kevin aside, the evidence for God's intervention in history, ie Jesus, is fairly comprehensive, if it's evidence you look for. Like you say, it's not proof any of us can seek, for that's impossible, really.

Give me an example of "God's intervention in history"? i.e. something which can be shown conclusively and objectively to be the work of something called "god"?

My take on Jesus is that I have no real reason to doubt that a prophet of that name (or something very like it) existed, made a nuisance of himself, acquired a lot of followers and was crucified by the Romans. It's not an extraordinary claim. It's only extraordinary when you start bringing God into it, and there, I'm afraid, the claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Same with the "healings" - why is it that someone can't do a test like this: go into church with a broken arm (two doctors and an X-ray machine in the church lobby would be an acceptable way of determining this) and come out with the arm re-set? Oh, and don't forget another broken-armed patient who doesn't go up for "healing", as a control. If it actually happened, surely there would have been a documented, tested, peer-reviewed case of this sort by now?

I think "healings" can happen, but that it's a placebo effect.

(Nowt wrong with that btw. )

Christ's teachings were extraordinary and revolutionary even if you take God out of it.

context blah

I was with people who believe in reincarnation, I don't need to describe them as "mental" (charming) to prop up my trust in my own thought process.

Why would I want to enter that private world and attempt to test or damage it?

lol at "thought privately but did not say"

you accept it is empirically impossible to prove the non-existence of any god

why then are you interested in empirical evidence?
evidence of a healing, were you to experience it first hand even, would not be proof that God exists, you know this. Why not just say : empirical evidence doesn't come into it, either way.

reincarnation, as in, I spend my life with people who believe in multiple reincarnations

of course I believe in proper reincarnation ahem

"Christ's teachings were extraordinary and revolutionary even if you take God out of it"

Love Thy Neighbour? Turn the other cheek?
Well, I can do that. So can lots of people who are not Christians.

This is another problem with Alpha - I gather they spend a whole session or more discussing the "truth" of Christ's existence. For me it's not an issue - yes, he or someone very like him probably existed. But so what?

mmrsceptic: why LOL at "thought privately but did not say?" would you have preferred me to say to my Christian friends "I think this is a load of rubbish?"

It would just be nice to have some empirical evidence so that the "idea" that such things exists can actually have a bit of credence, that's all. It's not an unreasonable demand, is it? I would have thought Christians who believe in it would be falling over themselves to provide it. But no - when given such an open goal, Christians routinely hit the crossbar.

Of course non-christians can follow Christ's teachings. Although very few of us actually do, christian or non christian. If we all actually followed Christ's teachings, regardless of whether we believed in God or not, the repercussions throughout political life and society would be huge. Our way of living would change beyond recognition. Not quite as easy as loving your neighbour [we don't] and turning the other cheek [nope, we don't do that often either, not on MN, not in international politics] Christ was revolutionary in his application of equality and social justice to morality. It may seem old hat now [not that we do it] but without his teachings it may not have seemed that way.

To be honest, if that was all Christianity was about, I doubt I'd have a problem with it.

Well I suppose there's the old but true argument that if Jesus wasn't the son of God he was either a liar or a madman, from his claims, therefore just as a good man wasn't much cop. And there is good evidence for the resurrection, and there's the whole explosion of the early church, and the fact that unlike other 'messiah figures' or myths of the time to which SGB referred earlier this one lasted and changed billions of lives throughout history. Yes, and havoc was caused in the name - but certainly not the spirit- of it all.
Healing....that whole scenario you describe sounds rather clinical UQD - fact is, God sometimes heals, sometimes doesn't...there are many, many cases of doctors being baffled by the hard evidence, but somehow it doesn't hit the news, necessarily. My friend was healed of skin cancer; all the lymph nodes had disappeared on the scan, the doctor was flummoxed. Is this really the placebo effect? Another aquaintance found on a scan her baby had a cleft lip and palate and also a hole in the heart, after prayer she had another scan, it had completely disappeared and the baby was healthy. So there was evidence - the scan before, the scan after. I'm sure these things can be explained away, but there is more to it than that.
In the end, we can argue round the point til kingdom come but there aint a lot of point, if you're really not after proof, or not that interested really, why bother asking? (But am enjoying talking with you.)

The "liar or madman" thing (which I know is discussed at Alpha) sounds a bit reductive as, after all, we don't know what Jesus actually claimed - we only have other people's word for it.

As for changing billions of lives, well, yes, Christianity is one of the two most popular and fastest-growing religions in the times we happen to be living in. If you'd been alive in Ancient Greece, the same would have been said about their gods. And in 2000 years' time, something else may have come along. Who knows?

It's rather disingenuous to claim I am "not after proof or not interested." I am very interested, but am trying to make the point that, while you can neither prove nor disprove supernatural phenomena, you can at the very least provide as much evidence as you are able to, in order to make a case for it. Why are these supposed cases of miraculous healing not documented and peer-reviewed?

Jesus was supremely uninterested in questions relating to him being the Son of God. He was supremely interested in the things mentioned in my previous post.

[if we all followed Christ's teachings, Capitalism would collapse for a start ]