To argue that all who do not make a verbal confession of faith in Jesus as Lord are eternally lost is not only to go beyond the biblical evidence, it is to deny salvation to the Old Testament people of God, the mentally handicapped and little children.

What about my brother? he’s not mentally handicapped, but he’s an imbecile. By which i mean, ‘not the full shilling’. When i tell him that Jesus was God, and died for his sins then rose again he replies that it all sounds like nonsense and myth. He’s not really mentally ill he’s just really skeptical. He denies Christ as saviour for the same reason he denies that Mohammad teleported or that Elvis is alive and well. Simply because he’s not smart enough to realise that one is literal fact and truth and the others are myth and legend. Surely he’ll get into heaven with the mentally ill and the children and the historically illiterate?

The question being:  In what way is it[alpha] shockingly manipulative from your experience?

Alpha Course is mathematically honed and refined to manipulate by creating a spirit of niceness and welcomeness, cakes and purposefulness  for those who are maybe feeling a bit directionless in their lives, and to people who would like to believe that there is something more to life beyond the apparent futility of mortality. It’s ‘hey, we’re lovely happy people, we care about you, lets get in a small therapy group and discuss important things like life, let me listen to you and try to help you, let me tell you that I was once like you but I found Jesus and I’m now really happy, and if only you set aside your normal  ‘limiting’ scepticism and ‘believe’ it – that will somehow then make it more true, in fact lets just ‘try’ praying to see what happens… do you feel it? do you have that feeling? THAT’S god speaking, don’t ignore it, don’t ignore god who loves you and wants to help you, why, why?! why would to turn down this free gift he’s given you … he IS love, you like love don’t you, love is good, why are you rejecting love? it makes no sense!!  the voice in your head telling you that we’re nuts and stopping you believing this………….. that’s the devil’

The structure of Alpha would be just as successful in convincing people of any other cult or religion as it is for Christianity (I’ve no doubt a similar Islamic alpha set up in turkey would do the same job).

The crux is the glossing over of the potential/probable ‘non facts’ of the bible – that are not really debated, its just accepted in a ‘we all know that this stuff happened, so what do you think about it?’ way … what do you think Jesus meant when he said x? how do you think Jesus felt when y happened? what does this mean to us today? manipulative non-logical tricks like Lewis’ Trilemma etc inject enough confusion and put people off balance….    don’t get me started on the weekend away dynamic!

I understand that the goal is saving souls so the end justifies the means, but its classic emotional manipulation

The carefully honed genius of it is to move on to discussing the implications and the meaning in the Jesus stories before it’s been accepted by the alpha-ee that the events we are discussing the meaning and implication of, actually really happened. It’s a technique used by interrogators to break strong minded prisoners and it’s a well worn brain washing method (“”we know that you did x & y, now tell us when z is gonna happen!”” they can even convince people they’ve done something they know they haven’t).

A child becomes a Christian because authority figures who they respect tell them that its true – so churches run kids clubs & camps to gain respect and authority, adults need something more subtle, so churches set up alpha courses.

Podcast of Jon Ronson being interviewed about this C4 program

This latest offering from Zoomtard I find intriguing. He in turn is responding to an article by the Archbishop of Canterbury, let me address some of the statements, hopefully not too out of context.

>>You can’t be sure for sure for sure that on one level the new Coldplay album sucked as much as you remembered it nor on another that Jesus is not who he says he is.

This is a monster of a statement. I get an ice-cream headache when people start to define truth as something other than correctly assessed facts, I assume they are trying to pick my pocket. Linking my changing opinion on the Coldplay album with the Jesus stories is nonsense. The Coldplay album is not true or false, it is not something which can been assessed empirically, whereas Jesus either existed or didn’t, either said the things the bible says he says or he didn’t and he was the son of god or he wasn’t. To blur that stark choice is to deceive and manipulate. If a Christian is happy that their Christianity is still valid in the event that the bible isn’t reliable reportage,  this needs explicitly stated.

>> Most people instinctively doubt the claims that me and my type make about him. But your doubt isn’t complete. There are moments when you catch a glimpse of the story reflected in a novel you are reading or in the way that a niece approaches your sister or whatever it is for you that causes a joyous little moment of epistemic doubt. Maybe there is more to this. Maybe this story is the reality.

Therefore Jesus is god. Ok great, we can all go home! The idea of doubt not being complete is another incoherent proposal. It is meaningless. Is the writer happy to say that his doubt isn’t complete in all of the other infinitely possible god/messiah myths?  And is he saying that because the redemption narrative is popular and ingrained in culture (especially in the west) that this is somehow evidence for Jesus? This is ever more circular, metaphorically selling your soul to your hopes and our fears.

>> It can’t be broken down into essential principles. It is a story you have to get into. It’s a plot you have to let surround you. It’s a person who is other-worldly compelling and ground-breakingly relevant. It is not a theory that you subscribe to like gravity and so should not be approached the same way. It is not a system like free market capitalism that needs to advance and so should not be approached the same way. It’s the story of an unprincipled God and his intention to let us know we are more broken than we can admit and more loved than we can believe.

I would ask the writer how many other religions he has completely absorbed himself in to garner their ‘truth’. And I would ask him if he sees any problem with this, is this really the best way to assess the validity of a religions claim, is it really possible to remain objective? don’t you have to be intellectually satisfied with the claims before ‘joining’ as it were? Isn’t this exactly how a cult works? Forget about whether or not the bible is reliable, just let jesus in he’s knocking at your door and he loves you, why? why? would you reject this free gift of love etc etc. He consistently skips past the main event and on to the consequences. He loves the story, almost in the way he might love fiction, great fiction.  But stories like Lord of the Rings and Christmas Carol are great stories too,  immerse, redemptive but  not actual reality. It doesn’t reveal to us anything about actual historical events, it is no evidence that there is actual life after death and while it may inform or progress our ethical understanding it is not sacrosanct… and neither is the bible. Stories and myths are fantastic and we live by mythos as well as logos but when we start to think that these stories actually physically and historically happened we digress rather than progress.

Forget how great the consequences of a story is until you are convinced by the facts of the story is, the former having no influence on the later. This process of convincing requires only cognitive thought, and willingness to take advise from those more learned in the field of literature, history and archaeology, NOT self-feeding theology!.  In Christianity, The claim is not that the gospels are redemptive in themselves, the claim is that Jesus was God and therefore anything he did or said was innately ‘good’.  I find it completely understandable why (most) Christians in the world cling to a literal unfailing historical bible – because without that surety it takes a large dose of faith (wishful thinking) to believe that a loving god would have presented us with a communication so flawed, unimpressive  and unavailable to those who have not been indoctrinated as children or who simply wish maintain their critical rationale in the face of hear-say and delusion.

Membership of a ‘faith group’ being based on such an arbitrary cognitive state seems hard to justify when the question of doubt is raised.

Consider the following:
If I doubt that Jesus was born of a virgin
Is that ok? Am I still a Christian?
If I doubt that the bible is an accurate representation of events, or that we can really know what Jesus said or claimed
Is that ok? Am I still a Christian?
If I doubt that if there’s a god, that Jesus was his relative
Am I still a Christian?

Christians tend to answer this by trying to convince me that I’m wrong. However, that misses the point. Is it ok to doubt or is it not? And if it is, by how much

Doubt is not something we have control over, unless we decide to wilfully block our doubts, suspend our normal cognitive reasoning. This is known as faith, but it’s also known as self-delusion depending on the circumstance (whether we’re talking about my faith or someone else’s ‘false’ faith!)

If I doubt that something is true, then I can be moved to a position of no longer doubting it by being convinced by the evidence. Or I guess, some undeniable external revelation.

If the mater in question IS actually true but I am still not convinced then there are only a few options, either the evidence isn’t good enough or my cognitive intelligence is at fault

This is the problem with the arbitrary, circular, manipulative and viral nature of the proposal that we’re ‘Saved by grace through faith’. It’s a flawed theology.

The conceit is that the Bible, is reliable reportage – miraculously accurate and by its very nature irrefutable. Christians believe there is enough evidence to decide that water was turned to wine, dead men were raised and thousands of ready cooked fishes materialized from thin air. And furthermore, that there was no other important (perhaps more private) relevant statements made that were not reported in the book.

Surely the decision to believe this is at the very least a cognitive event. In the same way that I do not believe in ghosts (until convinced otherwise) I need to decide whether I accept the Bible / Koran (or 100s of other religious holy books) to be reliable. The tools I use to make this decision must be, for the most part, external to the stories/claims contained within the texts. The Koran making a statement that the Koran is true and I must accept that or go to hell, frankly is not very convincing. The same applies to other holy books. In fact, I could write one tomorrow, say something similar, let it mature for a few thousand years, and have just as much credibility.

However, once I have come to the decision that the Bible IS reliable, then its game over, you can consider me a Christian (same for Koran/Muslim). I propose that there is no one, of sane mind, alive on earth who accepts that the Bible is accurate in its reportage of what Jesus did and said… who still says he is not a Christian.

I state again, if you think the Bible is accurate and reliable, then there is no need to get involved in manipulative pleas like ‘Jesus loves you, just reach out and accept the gift, let him into your heart’. It’s irrelevant how ‘caring, wise and loving’ Jesus was. If he’s god, he’s god. Even if he’s a genocidal monster I’ll bow down since you had me at ‘accurate and reliable’. One does not need to meditate on the nature of Jesus and decide if you want to follow him – his reported personality and acts are totally dependent on the quality of the reportage. Furthermore if you try to hear mystical voices in your head (or your heart!?), its very likely they will oblige.

So why do Christians not say this? Why are the Alpha Courses and sermons structured with questions such as: Who is Jesus? Why did Jesus die? How does God guide us? Why are these so-called courses (and indeed sermons) not spending time proving the accuracy of the gospels, and leaving it at that ?

Why? Because even if we take the disastrous leap of assuming the bible is reliable before analyzing ‘why’… the logic has to be that redemption actually comes from accepting the Bible as accurate, rather than admitting you’re a sinner and that Jesus was the son of god etc etc.

Deciding whether or not the Bible is reliable is a cognitive action. How do we make cognitive decisions? – through analyzing the evidence. How do we make better decisions? Through application of our intellect and education. It’s obvious, but needs stating, that the better our intellect and education, the more likely we are to make correct analytical decisions.

Therefore the smarter one is, the more likely they are to be a Christian? Hmmmmmm. This certainly isn’t my observation.

Christians will then insert the ‘faith’ word. However, any old faith won’t do. It needs to be faith in the ‘correct’ god. So unless people who have never heard of the bible are having Jesus-redemption narratives miraculously planted in their heads (which actually wouldn’t require any faith either) – we’re back again the reliability of the bible.

Fact is that the overwhelming majority (90% according to one statistic) of people on earth carry on with the world-view of their parents and they can’t ALL be correct. -

If they seek a better understanding of the world around us, anyone who holds the religious world view which is prevalent in their society needs to be ultra skeptical about it, and assure themselves that the tenets are objectively reliable. ESPECIALLY if their holy book tells them not to put it to the test!

Humbly submitted

Herschel and Lucy Goldman are in their early 40′s living in Judea. Herschel is a tent maker and Lucy is a homemaker. They work hard all day and in the evenings when they gather as a family for a meal, they always invite local people who have no family of their own to join them. They believe this is how Yahweh wants them to treat others.

Every Saturday, they go to the synagogue to worship God and pray for a messiah. They are praying for a saviour to free them from the Romans and bring peace to the region. They hope for a king of the Jews to lift them out of their hardships. They trust god, who has brought them this far, to continue to be at their side and help them know when ‘the One’ has come.

At this time, there are regular rumours and mumblings of messiahs. People are so desperate for salvation that it seems that some are willing to fall for any old claim. Hershel and Lucy are reasonable people. They believe that god will make it clear to them who is the one, and that they should trust him. While they have an idea of what they are expecting in a messiah, they know that Yahweh moves in mysterious ways; so they tell their children to always keen an open mind.

Recently, there has been another messiah claim. This time it is about a guy called Jesus of Nazareth. As always, Herschel and Lucy are interested but are careful not getting their hopes up. They believe it was important to keep hold of their god given rationale and not just fall for any claim, even though they dearly want to believe. The thing about Jesus is that he doesn’t seem to be this strong military leader who can free them from the Romans. This does not quite ring true of what they were expecting, but they are so hoping for a messiah that they decided to keep a breast of the goings on.
One Tuesday morning, a guy came in to buy a tent and says he’s believes Jesus is the messiah. Herschel decides to ask him some questions:

OK, why do you think he is the messiah?

First, because he says he is.

Okaaay… and?

He’s performed miracles. He’s made blind see, lame walk etc.

What!? Really? Thats very impressive. Tell me more. Did you actually witness this? Because if he did real miracles, then I’m pretty much there in believing he’s the messiah.

Well, no. I heard it from a friend who says that he healed his fathers legs. Anyway, he doesn’t want you to see his miracles… he wants you to have free will.. and seeing miracles takes away that free will.

Uh? Did he do the miracles or not? My daughter Lisa is dying. Will he come and heal her? If God loves me as much as he loves your friend then of course he will – and I think I would be ready to believe it. Why would he want to make it difficult to believe – but at the same time prove himself to some people with miraculous signs?… I think I need to meet this guy.

Well no, there’s a problem, he’s not here any more. He was killed by the Romans, but it’s ok his followers say that he rose from the dead.

Ok, well that would be sure fire proof… when he comes to Jerusalem after his resurrection I’ll certainly go and see him – that might just be enough evidence for me. It would dishonour Yahweh to accept some random guy as his messiah without being sure (any charlatan could say I’m the messiah and can do miracles, but I don’t want to show you, because it takes away your free will). It’s very different kind of messiah to what I was expecting – but I’ll meet him and assess the claim on its merits.

Well, unfortunately he’s just appeared to a select few then he decided just to ascend to heaven.

So you’re saying that the messiah came, but he didn’t want to make it too obvious to me that he was the messiah because he wanted me to have free will to believe… yet he did do miracles for some other people, so they had no choice but to believe. And you’re telling me I’m to believe your story about this or myself and my family are going to hell? I’m willing to stretch to the idea that the messiah might not the be powerful king of the Jews I’m expecting – but please don’t insult my god given intelligence!

Herschel and Lucy Goldman are now burning in hell for failing to spot that Jesus was the messiah

- QuestionMonkey

To paraphrase…”Children in Christian families, in reality opt-out of it rather than in.” Accepted, and conceeded.

Think how big a step is it, for a normal nice child to opt out!? All those times when mummy told him with a huge smile, look how wonderful Jesus is, he gave us you, you were a gift from Allah. Remember that time we prayed in the car that granny would get better and she did, how wonderful Allah’s grace is… look at the wonder of ‘god’s’ creation etc etc Why would you ever want to reject Jesus who loves you and DIED for you!?! Mummy and daddy are bigger, older and smarter than you, and they ARE the TRUTH as far as child is concerned… and they believe all this stuff – what on earth would make a 10 year old disagree? (but I think belief in superhuman/godly happenings should ALWAYS be an opt-in… or myths and superstitions just pass down through generations)

Whilst I’ve no doubt that your kids will be ‘free’ to not believe, it’s in the same way that are ‘free’ to become a criminal. They love and respect their parents, and appreciate the love and teaching you have given them, and also church life is very nourishing and supporting…so for them to say… hmm nah I don’t really buy this stuff anymore is a massive slap in the face to Christian parents and the children know this. Much more than say supporting a different football team to dad, or even dare I say coming out as gay. My parents were reasonably liberal open minded, accepting and worldly wise people, but I swear that it would have been easier for me to tell them I was gay and loved men rather than that I didn’t love Jesus (not that i ever wanted to do either).

I’ve said on KBAE’s blog, and Jayber seems to concur that maybe there is no moment when a child of Christian parents ever gains ‘faith’ and is ‘saved’, if they have been taught jesus as fact from childhood… it’s a process of being old enough to realise what you need to do to be a ‘big boy’ and make your parents really happy… rather than a conscious decision upon weighing the evidence.

The ramifications of the opt-out rather than opt-in are huge in terms of human’s inclination to post-rationalise their decisions (especially if you are 3rd, 4th 5th, 20th generation believers!). There is no doubt that some people come to Christianity fresh, and are convinced by other believers’ experience or the evidence for Jesus. While that can’t be denied, the overwhelming majority of church going believers are people who have been brought up as children to accept (rather than believe) the Jesus story. Is this really faith? or is faith just a post-rationalised add-on to justify acceptance of unsatisfactory evidence. The what-do-we-teach-our-children issue is more of a what-did-my-parents-teach-me… and what baring had that on my openness to be convinved by the resurection (on which it all hangs).

Although christianty is much more… it flows from an intellectual decision to believe that the resurection actualy happened. Is it not fair that someone should be allowed to make that decision from a position of first not believing it… as oppossed to being indoctrinated with it (with the best of intentions). Same goes for Joesph Smith and the tablets, mohammad and the angel, Tom Cruise and the aliens etc etc.

I think perspective can sometimes be gained by non-opt-outs by analyzing other normal, intelligent, non-opt-outs in other religions, faiths, sects and cults who have been brought up accepting that environment as normal and rational – then ask yourself why they believe what they believe and compare it to why you believe what you believe – it’s a can of worms that anyone who seeks truth mustn’t be afraid to open… unless the Jesus redemption narrative is more important to them than ultimate reality.

So what is the process from damnation to Christian salvation?

Discussions with believers tend to follow a consistent path. If I say that having read the gospels, I am unconvinced that they represent proof or even good evidence of the resurrection, they will argue sometimes very intelligently as to why the proof is good and why I am wrong to disbelieve. If I am honest with them and say that I remain unconvinced they say that I need to open my mind and let the spirit in… let Jesus do the work,he’s knocking at the door just let him in. Or something along those lines.

This leaves me in a quandary. Either I am not intelligent enough to understand how the gospels are reliable or my level of evidence requirement is too high. If it’s the former then it stands to reason that everyone who has accepted the evidence of the gospels is smarter and/or better informed than me. I don’t think that many of my Christian friends would accept that the loving creator god has built into the salvation narrative an intellectual filter to keep the idiots out of heaven.

Therefore what it must require is a lowering of the standard of evidence, opening my mind as it were, letting the holy spirit in. The problem with this is what happens if Hari Krishna or Mohammad or Tom Cruise jumps in instead now that the bar has been lowered? Or for that mater, all kinds of new age hoo haa, myths and legends. Isn’t it a strange co-incidence that depending on your family and culture a different faith’s ‘holy spirit’ tends to reveal itself when they ‘open their mind’. Surely I need to have read and accepted the gospels to know that when Krishna comes knocking on my heart that he’s actually a myth.

There may well be another route which I’m missing but most of what we consider goodness and progress in the world has come from the application of reason, intellect and clear-headedness – it shouldn’t be abandoned or compromised lightly.

The disciples claim to have seen him alive, and later died for this… ‘people don’t do that’. 513 (or whatever) saw him alive after the resurrection.

Before I get to the main point of this, let me give my simplistic and probably ignorant assessment of that. The disciples saw him alive? Says who? Would they have any reason to exaggerate ? Is it possible they were traumatised? There are plenty of metaphors in the NT, are you sure it wasn’t a metaphorical resurrection they were convinced about, but over the decades and translations it was written as physical fact… because for them, the ‘visitation’ they had was as good as physical. Possible?

Of that 500+ people who apparently saw him… if im not wrong 500 of them were at one meeting, mentioned in Colossians (?). Now, are we sure it wasn’t 501, or 499, are we sure it wasn’t actually 300 or 50? And of those 500 how many where 100% convinced that it was him? Do we have at least letters of confirmation from them all? Or do we just believe this because 50 or so years later St Paul wrote it in a letter to encourage an early church?

Now as I said, im not too much with the smarts! Maybe it’s just that I don’t get it. But the hundreds of thousands of god-fearing child-loving charitable reasonable people at the time in Israel weren’t exactly falling over themselves to believe the resurrection. They quite reasonably said… well, ok if he really is risen again then can we see him? Is he going to come to Jerusalem again to say hi to Pilot and the Pharisees? OH THEY OF LITTLE FAITH!!

It could well be, that im not smart enough to understand the evidence, I admit this. Problem is, how smart does one have to be to be a Christian? Is Jesus only for the really smart people who understand why the evidence is good enough and should be believed? If not, then are we saying that we should teach our children to accept certain things on less than empathic evidence? Not only that but they should accept ‘unlikely’ things like resurrections on less than emphatic evidence?

I think I know where that leads… and it’s nowhere good.