The Alpha Course - Session 6... and course review.

Figgerson: Suppose I ask you what is to the north of England. What would you say?
Mathers: Scotland.
Figgerson: And what lies to the north of Scotland?
Mathers: Iceland.
Figgerson: And to the north of Iceland?
Mathers: The Arctic Circle.
Figgerson: And to the north of the Arctic Circle?
Mathers: The North Pole.
Figgerson: And what lies to the north of the North Pole?
Mathers: Er. What do you mean?

- Stephen Law, The Philosophy Gym

Alpha Course session six began the same as any other. Once again, the food was delicious – in fact, I think it may have been their best yet – but this time, that was as far as I got. Immediately after I’d finished eating, I gave a small donation to cover the cost of the meal, made my apologies and left.

During dinner, I found myself seated next to the vicar. We had a pleasant conversation and he really came across as a very nice guy. He asked how my week had been and I said it had gone well. I then asked if he’d been busy. His response was something I found very interesting: he said “Well, I tend not to say I’m busy. I have this theory that clergy shouldn’t be ‘busy’." I found this strange and quizzed him further. "Well, because as soon as you say that, it sounds as though you’re saying ‘I don’t have time for you.’ So if anybody asks me, I always say ‘well, I have plenty of things to do, but... I’m not busy.’” It’s nice. I think it might be the first thing of value that I’ve learned during this course.

It’s been an interesting journey, but most of that interest has come from the responses I’ve had to my blog as opposed to the course content itself. It’s been fascinating to discover, week by week, just how many people are reading it and what their different takes on things are. It’s almost an irony that some of the most vocal responses have been from my Christian friends who, despite my blog being almost entirely critical in the most negative sense towards the act of faith, have reacted positively and kindly to what I’ve said. One friend even made a gift of a book to me – which, I promise you, I have been reading – for which I can only take this opportunity to say thank you. If anything, it’s brought me closer to my Christian friends, and that’s something I’m happy about. You're all really good people, and I'm glad our differences in beliefs don't cause a divide. I'm happy to count you as my friends.


Having said that, you might not want to read the words that follow...


The second category of readers have been the ones who share my worldview – some of whom have been clearly lapping up any and every ounce of open disrespect I showed to this belief system, salivating every time I made a wise-crack at faith’s expense, or had the nerve to directly challenge a logically fallacious or just plain factually incorrect point made by the course staff. Guys, you’re the ones who should be speaking up more! It’s a simple fact that our beliefs inform our actions and in that respect, the fewer false beliefs that are allowed to proliferate the better. It’s only the fact that we so often just don’t want to upset those around us by the simple act of questioning their beliefs, that we’re the ones who are responsible for the strength of an institution that really doesn’t deserve the place it holds. Don’t be wishy-washy about it – if you don’t really believe that 2,000 years ago a virgin gave birth to a child who would perform miracles during his life, until thirty-three years later, after being crucified, stabbed with a spear and stuck in a cave for three days, came back to life, then don’t pay this stuff the respect it doesn’t deserve! It doesn’t take much: you don’t have to write blogs yourself, or preach on the streets, or join the National Secular Society. Just do simple things: don’t tick the “Christian” box on a census form just because you went to a Christian school, tick “No religion” if you don’t really believe it; don’t get your kids baptised (there are equivalent secular ceremonies if you still wish to have your family present when celebrating your new child); don’t marry in a church (again, you can have a beautiful day’s celebration without any superstitious overtones), etc. These are all very, very simple things you can do differently without changing your life except for giving yourself the relief of not having to show phony reverence to something that doesn’t deserve to be revered. It might sound preachy, but all I’m doing is asking you the question: if you enjoyed my blog so much, if you agree with my worldview, then why would you do any of these things in the first place other than because it’s “just what people do”? Just ask yourself that question. Maybe you can help bring about the sea change.


OK, OK, I admit it, I am being preachy, call me an evangelical atheist if you must, I don’t care, the label sticks and I’ll wear it with pride. But there are good reasons that I am this way, and one of those reasons involves the third category of people who sent me feedback. For some, going up against the church’s dogma was not simply a source of amusement, but something that could have prevented years of fear and torment if it had been done sooner. As I said in Alpha Course blog number 5, there are tens of thousands of different denominations, each running their own interpretation of the infallible and perfect word of God, as presented in the Bible, and some of them cherry-pick the nice bits while others cherry-pick the not so nice bits in order to justify their pre-held prejudices without having to give them too much thought and rational scrutiny. In some denominations, God is all-loving, while in others he is to be feared, and its a matter of good or bad luck which one you happen to be born into. I heard feedback from people who had grown up with a genuine fear of God – his ability to know your every thought and deed and his proclivity to punish those who disobey – but who had since rejected it. These were the most inspiring messages, the ones that really made me feel that what I was doing was worthwhile. I wasn’t just there to rattle cages and wind people up for the sake of amusing those readers who find it all very funny, I was there because I genuinely feel that this is an important issue. I went in with an open mind, ready to be convinced, but left with a clear and distinct impression that the vacuousness of the claims can only be matched by the eagerness with which people want to believe. There's no open-mindedness, just a closed mindset to disconfirming evidence. And yet, for people who had this nonsense pushed on them from an early age it became a source of terror. One person wrote to me saying "I wonder sometimes, what if I hadn't grown up in a city, around people with different ideas and instead had grown up in a place more isolated. I might still believe these things now. Even as a grown adult, I'd still be in constant fear." It's a difficult thought to swallow.
The court cases against clergy sexually abusing children are famous these days, but this seems of secondary concern to me in comparison to the worse crime: instilling life-long fear of somebody that knows your every move, deed and thought seems like a pretty harsh form of mental abuse to me. The person who commented was clearly of a similar opinion, saying "if only there was a way to sue!"
For those of you that have gotten used to my blunt approach to religion, my response to this may surprise you. I do think its an horrendous thing to do to a child, but even I can be a little sympathetic to those who do the preaching, and I'll explain why. But first, I'll explain why I left, before getting back to how I responded to this.

Let me begin by saying that I do not regret or apologise for a single word I've said in these posts. That's not why I left. To anybody who thinks I've been strident or offensive, then I would make the suggestion that it is you that has been the cause of the offense for holding onto these beliefs in the face of reason, whereas the only thing that I have ever done here is to try to be as honest as I possibly can. A statement of fact cannot be insolence. I think those readers are in the very small minority anyway.
But that doesn't mean I don't regret anything about my Alpha Course experience, because I do. There are things that I now wish I'd done differently.

In writing this blog and posting it, I have been completely open about my identity. Likewise, during the course itself I was also open about my identity. I was open about my beliefs too, when asked directly, although I took a week or two to feel fully comfortable with "outing" myself in such a voluntarily forthcoming way. I get a real anxiety about dishonesty, I'm a terrible liar and I hate doing it, which is why I lie very rarely, usually only stretching to little white-lies where there's a certainty it can do no harm. What I didn't do, though, was tell the people on the course that I was writing up and publishing my experience online. Since I never mentioned the specific church by name, and deliberately tried to keep the people involved unidentifiable, I didn't feel it was either necessary or appropriate to tell them: this blog was intended to be a form of investigative "gonzo" journalism, where I tried to keep the influence of knowing that the sessions were being reported on away from affecting what went on there. As I said before, my aim was to simply report on the course content and their arguments. In this way, the blog could be "universalized", so as to be a fair representation of what typically goes on at any Alpha Course anywhere.
This approach had the extra benefit of ensuring that nobody involved in the running of the course - who were clearly doing this with the best of intentions - would feel betrayed. Yet somehow, I got rumbled.

As I sat next to the vicar at dinner and he told me about how he never tells people he's "busy" so that they don't feel they're being ignored, this thought was running through my head. How many of them know about the blog? How many of them have read it? Now I felt completely dishonest in not telling them what I was planning to do, and they knew about it.
I know, you can still say that I didn't identify anybody, and that I did nothing wrong. I agree, I don't think I did anything immoral, but the change felt extremely uncomfortable. So I have to confess, I took the coward's way out and left. Hate me for wimping out if you must, I deserve it, I should have stuck to my guns. But that dishonesty anxiety was a little too much to bear, so I bailed.
In fact, now that I think about it, I feel a little ashamed for leaving when there was so much more to come. I'm very new to this kind of confrontation, I'll call this a learning experience. But please remember this: to those of you reading, you only get the impression of those on the course from reading my words. I, on the other hand, was dealing with real people. There's a whole extra dimension there where compassion, empathy and general care for others becomes a very real concern. I know I need to develop thicker skin, but these people were just too nice.

I spoke to a friend a few days after quitting and told her that it hadn't put me off completely, but that I'd learned a few things from it. Maybe I would do it again one day, but take a slightly different approach. She suggested I take the course, writing it up as I go along, but not publishing it until the course is fully complete. It's an excellent idea that I'll give serious consideration.

But let me get back to how I responded to the person who commented, wishing there was a way to sue the people who instilled fear in him for years:
"Remember that just before you said that, you also said that if you hadn't grown up in the culture you're in - if you'd have been a little more isolated - then you may still feel that fear now. Now imagine that you then have children of your own, and you still have a very real fear and a genuine belief. The fear you would feel on behalf of your children - who you would naturally want to protect as passionately as you could - would drive you to instill the same beliefs in them too. You'd do it out of love, not wanting them to go to Hell or suffer God's judgement. And these people who preach so passionately about it could have been you. Even if we could sue these people, it wouldn't be right: they're victims of the lie just the same as any of us."

So that's it. That's my Alpha Course experience. But did it teach me what it set out to?
On the cover of the course booklet, it says "Explore the meaning of life." The meaning of life. Wow, the great mystery people have been pondering over for millennia. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Did the Alpha Course answer this question? No. Because it's a stupid question. On the surface, it seems a reasonable question to ask. But compare it to a question such as "What is the colour of sleep?" Or "What number is bigger than infinity?" Or, as I began this blog, "What lies north of the North Pole?" There isn't an answer, although the question is posed to assume that there is - if only we could find it. But we can't - because life has no meaning.

But don't despair! Life may not have a meaning, but it has something else that makes it important: value. Each one of us may be completely insignificant on the scale of the universe: each of us merely a dot, sitting on a bigger dot, revolving round a bigger dot, swirling among millions of other dots among billions of other galaxies of dots... but here's the cool thing: at least you're a dot. And while we're pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, we're tremendously significant to each other.* If you've got a bit of love in your life, you don't need meaning. This life is your one shot, so make the most of it.

And don't waste your time on bullshit.


Thanks for reading. If you've been following this from any of the forums I've been posting this on, feel free to add me on facebook (Blake Hutchings) - let me know you've been reading when you send a friend request. More blogs will be coming, tackling many other subjects of a similar nature, so if you've enjoyed them, stick around.


*A few lines from this paragraph are paraphrased from an essay written by Lauren Becker from the Point of Inquiry podcast. Unfortunately, I can't find the original source to reference, but I wanted to give credit where it was due, and avoid any accusations of plagiarism.