I was disappointed that my local church, when advertising the Alpha Course this year, didn’t use its usual poster. You know the one – and if you don’t it’s like the one above – that asks ‘Is this it?’, meaning both, ‘Is this all there is to life?’ and ‘Is this life all there is?’ Every year, I so much want to answer the question by scrawling ‘Yes’ on the bottom of the poster. I don’t, of course, because I’m too law-abiding to deface someone else’s property. But ‘yes’ really is the answer to the question ‘Is this it?’ and to the other two questions it suggests. This life is all there is. What you make of it is also ‘all there is’ (so better make the most of it).
Of course, the Alpha Course and Christians in general want to persuade you that this life isn’t all there is, that a better life awaits you after death. They want to tell you too that there’s a life that’s better than the one you’re currently living, however interesting, challenging, fulfilling or unhappy that might be. All you have to do to have this better life – and have it last forever – is to give yourself to Jesus. Oh, yes, and sign up for the Alpha Course too, of course.
Will your life really get better if you decide to believe in a mythical figure who magically sacrificed himself to himself to save you from yourself? It might, but not because you’ll have bought into this particular delusion. If it happens at all, life will be better because you’ll have become a member of a community (a church) and will enjoy the support of others who share the delusion. It might seem better too because your church will tell you what to think about particular issues – morality, abortion, homosexuality, evolution, for example – and you will be freed, should you want to be, from the burden of thinking for yourself.
But your life will not assume any cosmic significance, because nothing human beings do, say or believe ever has cosmic significance. Humans, whatever your church or the Alpha Course tells you, simply do not have cosmic significance. So, your decision to follow Christ won’t mean you’ll live forever (because, however much they might wish it, human beings don’t live forever.) It will not transform you into a ‘spiritual creature’; won’t make you beloved of the Creator of the universe; won’t transform you into the likeness of the mythical Christ. You will not have a hot-line to either the Creator nor to this Christ and so you won’t find them answering your prayers. You will not be part of any cosmic battle between God and the devil. You will not have God’s Son or the Son’s Spirit (which is it, Christians?) coming to make their home in you. You will no more be living in the End Times than you were before your conversion and the world will, though you will fail to recognise it, make even less sense than it does now.
What Christianity offers is pure fantasy, the same sort of fantasy that Mormons, Muslims, Moonies and all manner of other religious believers claim as their Truth. The only difference between your fantasy and theirs will be in the detail. Of course, as a Christian you’ll be told that your set of superstitions is the real and only Truth and that all of the others are false (or the lies of the devil, or whatever.) But in reality, yours will be just as absurd, just as impossible, just as disconnected from reality as theirs. And, what’s more, you’ll go on facing the same problems, the same joys, the same pain, the same short lifespan and the same opportunities that your culture offers you, that you’ve always had.
So give the Alpha Course a miss. Give Christianity a miss. Give all religion a miss. Give anything that tells you this life isn’t all there is a miss too, because this IS all there is. And thank God for that.
rejectingjesus, 
but there IS life after death. Recent research has demonstrated this…
LikeLike
Of course it has, Reginald. You might want to cite this ‘research’, just to satisfy any sceptics who wander by and decide you’re talking bollocks.
LikeLike
it is freely available online.
LikeLike
So why don’t you direct us to it? The only research I can find online suggests “awareness can continue for at least several minutes after clinical death.” (source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11144442/First-hint-of-life-after-death-in-biggest-ever-scientific-study.html).
But ‘several minutes’ is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the eternal life ingenuously offered by religion. That still doesn’t exist, however much you might wish it did.
LikeLike
who mentioned religion? You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about that.
LikeLike
I mentioned religion – this is, after all, a discussion of my post on my blog, remember? If you bothered to read it properly, you’d see I talk about the false promises of religion, one of which is ‘eternal life’. You responded with your own religious agenda. Let’s not pretend that that’s not what you’re peddling, when your own blog is nothing but a series of religious pictures. Honesty, Reggie, honesty. Try it, you’ll like it.
LikeLike
but I was not speaking of religion – even if you were.
LikeLike
So your point was?
LikeLike
my point? There IS life after death. Recent research has demonstrated this…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Near-Death-Experiences-Understanding/dp/1780285655
LikeLike
The clue is in the title, p.a./Reg: ‘near death experiences’. These are the entirely inward hallucinations of people who are still alive – hence ‘near death’ – and who return to consciousness to tell the tale. How then are they evidence of what happens when someone actually dies?
Secondly, there are very sound scientific explanations for NDEs, particularly those that occur when the brain is starved of oxygen. (http://io9.com/a-new-scientific-explanation-for-near-death-experiences-1110395345)
Of course, it’d be nice to think we continue beyond death, but all of the evidence suggests the brain is the source of our sense of self and once it is completely extinguished, so too are we. (http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/10/aware-study-results-finally-published-does-not-prove-life-after-death/)
LikeLike
My ex-wife rejected Christianity a couple years before I did to which I somewhat argued with her about when she blamed me for it;I was such an evil hypocrite of course.
When I came to reject Christianity I let her know and we established a little more conversation.
So a few months ago she invited me along with members of her family and friends to a group session with a local psychic to which we had to pay $20 each.
The psychic told me I had a nondescript male angel watching over me and that I needed to find a new job.The psychic told my ex-wife that she was a man in a former life who had been a powerful wizard or shaman of a Celtic tribe and that she had throngs of fairies and unicorns watching over her and guiding her.
I couldn’t help but think wow it’s no wonder she’s usually such an unloving headstrong witch who lives in a fantasy world.And I know just what my angel looks like;he looks just like me.
After the session was over my ex was conversing with the psychic and I overheard the psychic tell her that we all choose our own parents.i just happened to be standing there and said none of us choose our own parents.It was so ridiculous to me I couldn’t bite my tongue.
The psychic has a shop full of tarot cards,pendulums,amulets,incense,herbs,polished rocks for good luck,and even crosses and pictures of Jesus.
Come to find out my ex has been into this stuff for several years and I told her she was just replacing one set of superstitions with another and we haven’t really talked since.
LikeLike
Well, I’m impressed – that psychic certainly saw you coming! The human capacity to believe any old mumbo-jumbo knows no bounds – we all fall for it. That’s why evidence is crucial, then we don’t have to believe, we know. Religions, from Christianity to New Age-ism don’t offer evidence; at best they have anecdotes that they try to pass off as evidence.
Happy new year to you and to any nondescript male angels listening in.
LikeLike