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'd agree pofaced that his teachings are radical in and of themselves, I think I was just trying to make the point that other figures throughout history have been revolutionary in their thinking. I think the resurrection adds another dimension that is above and beyond everything else. I find it hard to see how one could be passionate about his teachings without accepting all else that goes along with it, as his life and his sayings were permeated with self awareness about who he was (although I know some Christological scholars would argue otherwise) and his claims would seem foolish if he didn't actually die and rise again - it would be a case of good teaching punctuated with slightly off the wall statements which may insinuate that he was not all there. I believe that the fulness of his revolutionary teaching and actions along with the miracles and the cross and resurrection is what makes him different and utterly transforming.

There is a long tradition of mystery in arly celtic Christianity Mad Hair. The philosopher John Gray puts it well:

The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory'

John Gray in the same article on 'secular fundamentalism' articulates some of the issues I have tried to discuss on MN:

'Among contemporary anti-religious polemicists, only the French writer Michel Onfray has taken Nietzsche as his point of departure. In some ways, Onfray's In Defence of Atheism is superior to anything English-speaking writers have published on the subject. Refreshingly, Onfray recognises that evangelical atheism is an unwitting imitation of traditional religion: "Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy." More clearly than his Anglo-Saxon counterparts, Onfray understands the formative influence of religion on secular thinking. Yet he seems not to notice that the liberal values he takes for granted were partly shaped by Christianity and Judaism. The key liberal theorists of toleration are John Locke, who defended religious freedom in explicitly Christian terms, and Benedict Spinoza, a Jewish rationalist who was also a mystic. Yet Onfray has nothing but contempt for the traditions from which these thinkers emerged - particularly Jewish monotheism: "We do not possess an official certificate of birth for worship of one God," he writes. "But the family line is clear: the Jews invented it to endure the coherence, cohesion and existence of their small, threatened people." Here Onfray passes over an important distinction. It may be true that Jews first developed monotheism, but Judaism has never been a missionary faith. In seeking universal conversion, evangelical atheism belongs with Christianity and Islam.'

I think the balance lies in retaining something of the mystery (not ever being able to understand God, have him in our pockets so to speak) while also accepting the simple truths as Jesus put them forward, I don't think they're mutually incompatible.
My brain is a bit too tired for Gray's article today pofaced, it's gone all mushy. Isn't John Locke a character in Lost? I think I see the general gist tho...ish...

but 'simple truths' such as 'Ye who has not sinned cast the first stone' seems to have been forgotten by many Mad Hair [thinking of those nuns forcing single girls to give up their children again, for example]
'Simple truths' when it comes to the great metaphysical issues, Christ's birth, the resurrection, ideas of heaven and hell, are not quite so simple. Especially when Christ did much of his teaching through metaphor and parable.

Yes - agreed. The first stone thing is too often forgotten or ignored, including by many in church leadership.
I suppose they could be defined as simple in that they need to be accepted as simple - like a little child - if they can't be accepted on grounds of being against physical laws, for instance, that's where Jesus turns it round and says we almost have to accept it as a child - although I'm aware that in this argument would be infinite scope for accusations of being unthinking, blind and irrational. Yes - but that's the nature of it all.