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the chaplain (The Alpha Curse): Courses like this are use… Ordinary Girl (The Great Levelle…): Very nice post. If you d… the chaplain (No God. No Lord.…): That used to be one of my… the chaplain (The Great Levelle…): Christianity goes far bey… the chaplain (2008 Day of Praye…): What a waste of time, mon… Larro (2008 Day of Praye…): NOTHING!!!
Thank you. T… Ray winston (Church Is Pointle…): After 15 years of being “…
Tuesday 06 May 2008 at 5:50 pm
I expect most people in the UK (and a lot overseas as well) have heard of the banal and rather too popular Alpha Course, pioneered at Holy Trinity Brompton in the 1970s and modified for the general public by Nicky Gumbel, an Anglican vicar, in the 1990s. By 2007 it had been reported that over 10 million people worldwide (2 million in the UK) had attended a course.
The Alpha Course is meant to be an introduction to the essentials of Christianity. It involves eating a meal, watching a video and then having a discussion, with about a dozen sessions in total spread over several months. I went on the course in 2001, which was organised by a local Anglican church. Most people on the course were already attending the church. It was all very low key (do these people really believe in an eternal lake of fire?), the video talks were lacking in substance and the questions/answers raised during the discussion were of a trivial nature. The final session involved going on a "Holy Spirit Weekend" in order to "get zapped by the Spirit". As I expected, nothing happened. I wondered what kind of "spirit" these people were promoting.
I came away from the course feeling that nothing spiritual had happened. The course has been hugely successful in facilitating social interaction with fellow enquirers, but it does not demonstrate that God is real or working in the world. In fact, from a Biblical point of view (not that I believe the Bible), the course is inoculating people against the true faith, and hence should be called a curse, not a course. If you want to become a silly admirer of Nicky Gumbel and all his charismatic craziness then the Alpha Course is for you. However if you'd rather keep yourself from becoming the 10,000,001st victim of a scam (and an attractive one at that), then all the better for you.
Alpha Curse Mug
If you would like to purchase an Alpha Curse mug, they are available from the Anti-Church Store. Good for annoying Christians! You could even secretly put one or two in your local church crockery cupboard...
Sunday 27 April 2008 at 02:53 am
Christianity thrives on the fear of death. It mistakenly proposes that we can be sure of our destiny after death. It propagates the myth that people can be ready for death. The stark truth of the matter is that nobody is ever ready for death. Nobody knows what, if anything, will happen after they die. Not even Jesus Christ or the apostle Paul knew. Nor Apollo. Nor Epicurus or Socrates. It is the great unknown - an unknown that brings every man or woman down to the same level as their neighbour. Yes, death is the great leveller.
Mass, penance, sincerely and earnestly offering up "sinner's prayers", going to church, reading the Bible, "asking Jesus into your life", "giving your heart to God", going to confession, being baptised - all of these things are useless when it comes to the matter of death. None of them provide any guarantee of eternal bliss. They are all pointless rituals; a chasing after the wind. The prayers are not answered. God does not appear. The soul is not "saved". The promises fail and the Scriptures are rendered worthless.
The history of Christianity is a history of complete and utter failure. Hundreds of Mega-churches, thousands of missionaries, millions of dollars and billions of Sunday services have achieved absolutely nothing. It is all a delusion; a pretence; a sham which could not convince one man in a million that are capable of rational thought.
They say Christ was the infinite God in the flesh, that he performed miracles, rose from death and ascended into the clouds, yet knew not the time for figs. Only a handful of documents exist which lend "support" to these doctrines. Yet it is made incumbent upon the whole world to believe them. Most of the gospel stories are repeated - two, three or even four times, with contradictions. The disciples are described as idiots. If feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes wasn't enough to convince them, neither was a second such demostration to four thousand only two chapters later in the same book! Even until the very end some of them were unsure of his resurrection. What are we to make of all this? Only one thing - that the gospel accounts are largely fabrication - an embellishment of stories that were circulating at that time about a messiah figure walking the streets of Palestine. Even the bigoted apostle Paul could recall none of his words or works. Why did he separate himself from those who had seen Jesus in the flesh? His Jesus was a heavenly Christ, a Christ removed from human history.
Why would a God come down to earth before the invention of the printing press, radio or television? What is an extra 2,000 years after about 200,000 years of Homo Sapiens roaming the planet? With the internet and news networks everyone on the planet would have heard of this Jesus within days.
Most of the Old Testament is fiction, and therefore most of the New Testament must be also, since it is based upon the Old. There was no Moses, no flood of Noah, no Jonah swallowed by a fish, no tower of Babel, no conquest of Canaan, no Exodus, no fire and smoke on Mount Sinai, no talking donkeys, no collapsing walls of Jericho, no Ten Commandments, no Adam and Eve, no Garden of Eden, no Abraham and no Jehovah the great I AM.
There is simply no point living your life in fear of death. Since death comes to all, and all are not ready, then why fret over your own death? Go out, live life and enjoy all the days of your vain existence under the sun.
I expect most people in the UK (and a lot overseas as well) have heard of the banal and rather too popular Alpha Course, pioneered at Holy Trinity Brompton in the 1970s and modified for the general public by Nicky Gumbel, an Anglican vicar, in the 1990s. By 2007 it had been reported that over 10 million people worldwide (2 million in the UK) had attended a course. 
Alpha Curse Mug
Christianity thrives on the fear of death. It mistakenly proposes that we can be sure of our destiny after death. It propagates the myth that people can be ready for death. The stark truth of the matter is that nobody is ever ready for death. Nobody knows what, if anything, will happen after they die. Not even Jesus Christ or the apostle Paul knew. Nor Apollo. Nor Epicurus or Socrates. It is the great unknown - an unknown that brings every man or woman down to the same level as their neighbour. Yes, death is the great leveller.
