Although I am a humanist, having been invited to join in on an Alpha Course at my local church I felt it would be rude to simply say no without at least showing my face. So here goes:
(note that all names used, except those of historians, are pseudonyms)


Week 1 (technically week 2 but I missed the 1st): “Who is Jesus?”
At first impressions they all seemed like a lovely bunch of people and they are; literally no bad things to say about them.
Thankfully Mark, my Christian friend who I had agreed with that it was a bad idea to out me as a non-believer to early, was the only person there who knew I was not a believer, for now anyway. Mark’s friends Luke, Eve and I were having a bit of a joke around, such a nice atmosphere I almost forgot where I was until we were called to watch the video.


Part 1, Intro Video


I was expecting something good, hoping to learn something new at least. Yet, since I had actually done my research on the historicity of Jesus, I was woefully disappointed. It was a talk given by Nicky Gumbel, a skilled speaker and founder of the alpha course, his skill at speaking did not translate to history however. It wasn’t long before the well-known forgery in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews was being used as evidence of the divinity of Jesus. A brief mentioning of Tacitus and Suetonius, failing to mention that they were writing in the 2nd Century CE (I refer to CE now since the booklet I was handed said that AD and BC were evidence of Jesus’s divinity) and Suetonius only mentioned Chrestus, which was a common Greek name meaning good, not Jesus by name and Tacitus only repeats the then belief of Christians claiming no knowledge of Jesus’s existence.
We are then led through a painful amount of bible verses and even the empty tomb argument for Jesus’s existence. He then brings up the Lewis trilemma (Liar, Lunatic or Lord) and uses it as justification of Jesus’s existence and divinity, the trilemma itself assumes that Jesus existed and performed miracles; so in essence is a useless argument (more on this later). 
Nicky tells an anecdote of how he used to be an Atheist and when reading the New Testament he was instantly converted (obviously he didn’t read the horrendous things in the Old Testament). He rants about how all the nice things Jesus said (missing out the selling everything and relying on God to provide everything, slavery and chasing people around with whips) prove he was God. We then hear about Jesus’s resurrection, which apparently 500 people saw yet none of them wrote about it, and how Christianity is a relationship with Christ. The personal experiences people have with Christ (none cited however) being used as proof of his existence. The video draws to a close and Nicky asserts that all historians accept Jesus’s existence (which is probably news to most historians I have met) and divinity, with that the video ends.

Part 2, Discussion
After singing Amazing Grace, the first few lines I still find abhorrent, we are split into groups. I am grouped with Mark, Luke and a few others around my age. The group is being led by a young student, Mary, who initially invited me to this after seeing an argument between me and my course mate (ironically during this argument I had already responded to the claims about Tacitus, Josephus and Suetonius). Mary started off by asking what I thought was a great question in “If you could ask God anything, and be guaranteed an honest answer, what would you ask?” The first thing that popped into my head was “Why did you go to great lengths to conceal yourself?” but I thought it best to wait for other questions first. The suggestions from the group (Why did he make everything, why does he provide some with evidence but not others) were great but my personal favourite was “Why did God create things the way they are if he knew what was going to happen?” For a second I actually though there was another non-believer in the room so I thought now would be a good time to ask mine, it received mixed reactions but the atmosphere was still nice, it would not remain this way.


Mary’s first question was “Based on the video do you think there is enough evidence to believe Jesus existed?”
“Yes”
“Yes”
“Yes”
“Yes”
“Yes”
“No”
At this point with everyone looking at me, Mary asked me why, thankfully I had done my research and responded with what I thought to be a bulletproof argument: “The Josephus testimonial is a known forgery…Tacitus and Suetonius were not contemporaneous…The Lewis trilemma presumes his existence and can be equally applied to any religious figure.” Not wanting to mention the problems with the bible too soon as not to offend, although this came back to bite me in the ass. Mark explained that we have non-contemporary accounts of WW2 and we believe them and assuming 100% accuracy of the bible we should believe the stories about Jesus. I replied with the contemporary accounts, archaeological finds and enlistment details of soldiers etc. we have of world war 2 we can confirm it actually happened. Inevitably Julius Caesar was mentioned, I used the example that we had other contemporary accounts of him, things he said, did, coins with his face on, and sculptures of him.
Luke said there would be no coins with Jesus’s face on since he was a minor figure, my internal monologue screaming at me “He was seen by 500 people, raised himself and others from the dead, you mean to tell me nobody wrote about the zombie invasion of Jerusalem?” Needless to say I kept this thought to myself.


We discussed whether Jesus’s teachings were good and whether that was justification enough to believe he was God, it was mentioned that Jesus spoke of himself whereas other religious figures spoke of their Gods only and that Jesus was only human. I made a comparison between Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha and said that while I accepted that there was probably a real human who Jesus was based upon, there is insufficient evidence to warrant a belief that he was God. (At this point every time a question was asked people would wait for what I had to say, yet Mark’s presence kind of held me back, he had once referred to me as “Making Dawkins look moderate”)


One of the other members said that “Believing Jesus existed is the biggest leap, you have already made it, it only takes a little faith to believe he is God” I just thought of Apollonius of Tyana but before I could bring him up Luke made a remark that we take it on faith that coins contain gold, I replied that we can melt them down and test for gold, that the level of evidence should be different based on the claim and that their faith was equal to a Muslim’s faith in Allah. With Carl Sagan stuck firmly in my head I recited “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. I then asked if people believe me when I say there is a £1 coin in my pocket they answered yes; going all Sagan again I asked if they believed there was a “Dragon in my Garage”. This got a few laughs at least. It was stated that if people believe there is something and it is proven later they were right, Mark made a reference to the Library of Alexandria and how many books have been destroyed that could have contained evidence for Jesus’s divinity.


The final sentence I managed to get in was “Do you think we should believe something without evidence, based entirely on the chance some could be found?” There was silence for a moment, this seemed to have got a few people thinking, until one member said “I believe it because it makes me feel good, and if that doesn’t harm others it shouldn’t matter”. The words Condoms, Crusade, Homophobia, and Slavery etc. were racing through my head at this point, but this was all erased by what another member said:
“I know because I have felt God, I have heard him talking to me and guiding me”
The internal monologue fired up again with “Muslims say the same thing with Allah, Hindus with…”
At this point we were signalled that time was running out and I felt it would have been rude of me to say that so I didn’t.
As we left I shook hands with Mary and thanked her for the invite, she asked if I would be there next week, avoiding the question I said it depends on how busy I am, I’m not busy at all on those nights and I did really enjoy it. Even if I didn’t happen to agree with them they were all really nice people to be around, so I may just be there next week.