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?

Why the hell should anyone devote themselves to proving that there isn't a God? You don't hear of eminent scholars racking their brains to establish beyond all doubt that there isn't a tooth fairy. Until someone proves that there is, all the evidence screams that it's a myth - that's good enough for me

and agree that acknowledging (purely on an academic level, because one doesn't routinely go around acknowledging the possible existence of ridiculous mythical entities) that it can't be ruled impossible does NOT equate to atheists having gaping holes in their psyches

it's a common and rather odious assumption of Christians that the spiritual life of an atheist consists of a vacuum where THEIR beliefs ought to be

"it's a common and rather odious assumption of Christians that the spiritual life of an atheist consists of a vacuum where THEIR beliefs ought to be "

I could not agree more
(Specifically wrt schooling but that's a WHOLE different thread )

Well mmrsceptic i'm not out to defend Christianity but that is what the concept of Free Will is all about. God gave his creations [angels/people] free will and the ability to think for themselves. That is the metaphor designed to answer the problem you are illustrating.

If there is a God it is obviously completely interlinked with our emerging discoveries about how the universe works, and the mysteries those entail. Not some bloke in the sky telling Eve off for eating an apple. that is metaphor.

unaesthetised removal of organs from small children? Where on earth did you dredge that one up from?

It's perfectly possible to believe in appalling behaviour (rather difficult not to, in fact) without believing in evil. I don't believe in evil. It's symptomatic of a backward approach to the human condition IMO and serves no useful purpose as a concept.

Greeny -- why? because it's interesting. Because millions of people believe. Because up to Dawkins and beyond it's been the subject of great tranches of academic thought and discipline.

"all the evidence in the world screaming that it's a myth" -- well that's my POINT.

We are talking about faith. Faith does not require evidence of any kind, in fact it demands an absence of evidence.

And yes, the Christian God can be found to be an impossible entity given our understand of good and evil.

However this again is where faith comes in: and why the phrases "passes all understanding" and "mysterious ways" have such importance to Christians.

hi greeny (welcome back to your old name )

yes am going. are you? (it's not quite off topic, it's atheist hippy scouts we're going to )

I don't agree that is always the case Prunerz. i actually deregged over a thread where, when I tried to express the idea that the dichotomy of faith [doubt/fear vs hope/belief] had engendered some very important cultural developments of our history, I was told I was stating that Atheists had a barren internal life, and was being arrogant/pompous/odious/etc when I had said nothing about atheists at all. I'm a bloody agnostic anyway.

Excellent, Greeny can capably take over my side of the discussion cos I really do have to wash and nit comb children etc in the next few minutes. I'll agree with everything she says while I'm away...

Free will mmrsceptic. you are ignoring the concept of free will.

Greensleeves, from having my eyes open and reading the newspapers. I don't live in the UK. But one can look away, if one wants.

Pofaced: free will = choice. Choice = two or more alternatives. If one alternative is good, what's the other? not wholly good. Who made the alternatives? The entity that made everything. So who made the not wholly good alternative? The entity that made everything. Therefore the entity that made everything is not wholly good.

Oddly enough, I should be more defensive, but I do believe in God, and I am a Christian. I just have had to make a leap. I swear it's like believing that black is white sometimes, but I still have faith.

hello pofaced and to you

this is all a bit much for a Wednesday night

I should be booking a holiday

lol at "mysertious ways"

nothing mysterious about the Christian faith at all, it serves the same cynical prosaic prupose as every other organised religion/mass movement in human history - social control, moral uniformity, a crutch for the needy and lonely

I failt to see how it could pass anyone's understanding tbh, the mechanism involved is so embarrassingly simple

and the "well, that's where faith comes in" argument IME is usually applied (with concomitant cow-eyed beatific smile) when a Christian who fancies him/herself as a scholar has tangled with an atheist and lost

Free will is another thing which seems to be quite hard to prove the existence of even though most of us 'feel' that we have it. But that would be yet another thread.

Dawkins would continue to bang on about the ridiculousness of creationism even in the unlikely event of his conversion because evolutionary biology is his area of scientific expertise and so - whether its given much credence here or not - its bound to be something he has to speak out against.
The arguments against theistic religions are actually a separate issue.

Greeny did you actually read anything I wrote

probably not, it was a bit dull

I was interested in what RD said about it as there were a few people around who'd read the book

sorry green but i don't think you understood what I was trying to say

am also wondering where the need to be abusive and contemptuous comes from, with some atheists

I sometimes think faith is the biggest con-trick in history. So convenient!

Absolutely that is what it has been turned into Greensleeves. It was not the original purpose of it. The original purpose was revolutionising, liberating, subversive. Then the organised church was born.

It is a paradox, the free will thing, yes mmrsceptic. But the alternative, if you go with the metaphor, was for human beings to have no choices in life, so no freedom.

I have slightly lost you po-faced, I'm assuming you don't mean one of the alternatives that we can choose. I think it;s me though, being a bit slow to keep up.

Yes good point about lack of free will. But I see that as a debate within Christianity ie: once you've signed up. Then it's interesting to ask, how can we have free will when God knows what we are going to do and he made every circumstance in the world.

Your actual free will between good and evil is a very basic, are you actually going to fire out of the trap kind of paradox.

(used to used that word in essays all the time at university. Along with dynamic as a noun, and purchase as an intransitive verb. What tosh I must have produced.)

anyway that was very interesting

have rsi now

abusive - I don't think so

contemptuous - well I don't think it's difficult to see why Christian arguments engender contempt in those who prefer rational/ empirically plausible explanations

I did read your posts - I decided not to engage directly with the "God cannot be wholly good because evil exists" because I don't accept any of the premises you presented - it would be a bit like getting drawn into one of ds1's "who is scarier, Darth Vader or Evil Edna" discussions.

no purchase as a noun and obtain as an intransitive verb

sorry all am boring myself now

oh, come on, most of us on this thread are being perfectly polite, I'd say. Greeny is just, ahem, particularly bombastic in style. she doesn't restrict it to threads about religion.

Why do Christians ask the people they love and respect to go on Alpha?

If you knew there was a tidal wave coming, would you tell your family and friends (and hopefully others) to get off the beach?

Christians don't want to brainwash, or persuade people against their wills - it's just that Jesus asked his followers to tell others about him - not about religion, or church or being nice, or anything, but about him. The Alpha course is one way of doing this. Lots of Christians know that their friends won't listen to them, but take them on an Alpha course so that someone else can have a go. But we know that in the end some will decide to carry on and some won't - we're not offended though. Not at all.

Christianity Explored is another great course to do, very different from Alpha if happyclappyism isn't your thing. go to christianityexplored.org to find your nearest one.

Make sure your atheism is well thought-through, rather than a brainwashing by those who put their faith in e.g. Richard Dawkins style atheism, which is anti-scientific and ill-thought through. Try "The Dawkins Delusion" for a great response to Dawkins.

And if you're offended by my post, i apologise.