Alcoholics Anonymous and Atheism

God, Prejudice, Reason, and Alcoholics Anonymous

I Am A Successful Atheist in the AA "God Program"

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

Bill Wilson is responsible for writing the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," referred to as the Big Book. AA is a spiritual program, and a "God program," meaning it depends upon what AA terms a "higher power" to relieve the alcoholic of his/her need to get drunk.

In many places in the Big Book we read specifically that other things than God can be considered a higher power. The use of the AA group itself with people you come to rely on, friends, and other people with whom you can discuss your problems, are often suggested as a higher power. A man can think of his wife and children, and use them as his "higher power" because of the very real possibility that if he goes on another binge, or gets arrested one more time while drunk, he could lose them.

Anytime one of us who is alcoholic goes to a meeting and says anything like, "When I fought with my son over something stupid, I knew I had to get to a meeting"; or "I realized I was letting myself become hungry, angry, lonely, tired--I knew I had to get to a meeting," we are then using the group and our time there, away from the "outside world", as our higher power, to recoup a bit of our spirituality.

But in the end, AA members are expected, not by any membership requirement, but through the incessant urging of Wilson to "accept" that the higher power he expects us to discover is God. (Accepting God is not a requirement because there is only one membership requirement: the desire to stop drinking. But the constant urging to accept God has made many people see AA as a multi-denominational religious cult.)

"We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God." [emphasis added] The Big Book

page 46

Naturalism, to Wilson, was unnatural. Naturalism was prejudicial. "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." For Wilson, his own prejudice made him believe that "to continue as he is [as an atheist or agnostic] means disaster, especially if he an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. page 44

An alcoholic of the hopeless variety can only be hopeless because he does not accept God; to accept God means he isn't hopeless. "There Is A Solution" touts the previous chapter's title, and that way is through God. "This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer." p 17

The expectancy is that eventually all AA members will have "made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the power of God as we understood him"; and it expected to come sooner than later; turning over one's will is the third of twelve "steps". AA dogma, gathered up from the first few years of attempting to find the steps and the means to make them work, was that you could not get to Step Four without "doing" steps one, two and three first. (Step Two is admitting that only "a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"; Step One is "admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.")

But Bill Wilson was an extremely prejudicial and biased man. Do you notice in that quote from page 46 how he deftly turned "a power greater than ourselves" into God Himself, without even the pretext of qualifying "God" with "as we understood him"?

The phrase "as we understood (or understand) him" is always italicized in the Steps, in an effort to be inclusive of all religions. But Wilson had to be talked into accepting that phrase, and then only grudgingly. Yet whenever he wrote of his own experience and how it ought to be used by others, God stood alone and every member was expected by Wilson to "graduate" from using the group or other people or a hope as his/her higher power, to using God Himself--who in Wilson's mind stood alone without need of "understanding." After all, he wrote, "it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God." How could He be a God of anyone's understanding when Wilson admits that it was impossible for "any of us" (the original members) to understand Him?

Naturalism, which is necessarily an atheistic doctrine, and agnosticism, were, to Wilson, biases which the new members had to let go of.

"We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results..." [emphasis added] page 46

Page 46 is in the chapter of the Big Book entitled "We Agnostics." Wilson was never an agnostic, and he wrote no chapter for atheists, though he mentions them there. He speaks to the agnostics as though he had once been there himself, putting his brotherly arm around them in words, comforting them in the knowledge that things will be alright if they just let go and let God.

He writes in the first paragraph that "you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience can conquer." Many naturalists and others don't believe in the "spirit" because they have always been told it is linked to God, and God is what they are trying to discard by using an epistemology that admits of nothing supernatural. But this is not a problem for all naturalists.

The Deists were theistic naturalists. Thomas Jefferson wrote,
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

In Metaphysical Naturalism (MN) the spirit, the soul, is a naturally occurring non-supernatural physiological phenomenon of the fact of being human. When someone says he could not do something or was compelled to do something because his "conscience was being affected," it is the naturally occurring physiologically emotive phenomenon we perceive as our soul, that he is referring to.

MN understands existence to be natural and only natural, with nothing supernatural existing within existence. And of course, there is no existence outside of existence. Not even a God can be outside existence, though many believe a God could.

God could not--not without causing an irreparable contradiction within human language. If you believe in God and believe, as did America's Deist Founders, that it was God who gave us Reason in order to be able to solve our own problems without His intereference or help, then such a God would not also have allowed us to conceive acceptable contradictions; they break all the rules of the logic of linquistics. Allow one, you must allow them all. Then "nothing" will be "something," "yes" will be "no", and Reason will be worthless. We will return to the growling animalistic expressions of Man before he gained language, because without Reason language has no expression.

Boethius told us to join faith to reason, "insofar as is possible." Thomas Aquinas and others did that, and the juxtaposition led us to the scientific and then to the industrial revolutions. But at the same time, it did not banish faith by elevating Reason, and the Founders were forced to conceive a nation with a Constitution which assumed the separation of church and state. The assumption was common, was therefore not included in the Constitution in those words, and that common assumption allowed the Supreme Court to declare it a de facto part of the Constitution. The Deists would say it was Reason that dictated the Constitution.

Yet, Wilson tells us we must abandon Reason, for the blindness that comes with "accepting a power greater than ourselves" in the realm of the spirit while upholding Reason in the realm of all other things.

"Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists [There he goes again!] chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word... Rather vain of us, wasn't it?" page 49

But Thomas Paine, in "The Age of Reason", wrote: "The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. [ ] I know, by positive conclusion resulting from [my] search, that there is a power superior to all [ ] things, and that power is God."

Paine was one of the most outspoken Deists, even fleeing to France for his life because his devotion to God would not allow him to have faith in anything but a Reasonable God, and no organized religion is Reasonable to a Deist.

"The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient
Mythologists," wrote Paine, "accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud."

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago," Wilson wrote. [p. 44/45] Yet, isn't that what blind acceptance of a higher power is--a supposed better "code of morals" or "a better philosophy of life"?

Actually, Wilson must have realized they were not the same, or he would have said so. Instead he said, "We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, but the needed power wasn't there.

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma," he wrote, instead.

Their lack of power was from the desire to turn a wish into reality, without the "mere code of morals" or the "better philosophy." Philosophy is nothing without epistemology. Faith in God is the epistemology of disavowing Reason; faith is the only thing that Wilson serves up.

"Besides a seeming inablility to accept much on faith," Wilson wrote, about the problem of human intelligence as the last word, "we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinancy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. [ ] This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. [ ! ]

"Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith. [ ] We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow we couldn't step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning on Reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support.[ ]

"Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time! [ ! ]

"[A religious doubter] recounts that he fell out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by the conviction of the Presence of God. He had stepped from bridge to shore. [ ]

"His alcoholic problem was taken away."

I sit here and copy and paste and write these things, in order to tell the reader that I had my own spiritual experience, and my "alcoholic problem was taken away."
But my spiritual experience was not what faith would have me believe it to be; it is what Reason tells me it was. Spiritualism is not supernatural. Spiritualism is completely natural, and is psychological, combining the mind with emotions.

The mind is the most powerful force in human life. My experience was one of a comgination of mind and that natural phenomenon, the human soul, because they are irrevocably connected even in death; the soul follows the mind and the body into the grave. If I could bottle my experience and release it in a room with someone who was looking for God, he would claim his experience that came from my bottle was God, and then try to convince me of it.

Humility seems to be the greatest virtue in AA. It is mentioned specifically on nine pages of the Big Book and those mentions carry various descriptions of how it works and why it works and why we need it. There are many more references to humility in the other AA "approved literature," such as the "Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions". Honesty is mentioned on twelve pages, but we all know a man cannot be humble if he is not first honest.

Men whose humility does not extend to allowing the possibility that an atheist such as myself can have a spiritual experience and become sober by it, despite "the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON;" wrote Paine, "and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself."

Bill Wilson believed in the elevation of faith over Reason. Rather vain of him, wasn't it, to despise the "choisest gift of God to man," Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions;" wrote Paine, "he prays dictatorially; [ ] he follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say: Thou knowest not so well as I."

Wilson's prayers were like that: "Relieve me of the bondage of self," goes his Third Step Prayer, "that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power..."

The strictest adherence to Reason is the act of binding one's self to one's self; altruism was conceived as the act of giving one's self completely over to God, without asking for such things as the removal of one's difficulties: one took what God met out. And what kind of humility is it to ask God to remove one's difficulties, then turn and call that "victory over them"?

"It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and, in this case, it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How, then, is it that those people pretend to reject reason?" Paine

The rejection of Reason was not all Wilson's. It was, and is, endemic of the kind of organization that AA is. The co-founder of AA, "Dr. Bob," wrote in his own chapter of the Big Book, that atheists, agnostics, and skeptics have a form of "intellectual pride which keeps [them] from accepting what is in this book, [and] I feel sorry for you." [emphasis added]

He also ended his chapter saying, "Your Heavenly Father will never let you down!"
Rather prejudiced of him, wouldn't you say?

Note: I got my 3 year token in January, 2009. That spiritual experience that I had in my soul didn't put the fear of God in me; it put in me the fear of being drunk--and of dying that way or of killing someone else. That is a stronger deterrent, apparently, than God who I do not accept as existing.

But I am grateful to have found an AA community in which my outspoken atheism is not rejected. I am fully accepted by my home group and other groups, but spiritualism is something we must never loose sight of. It is a gift of reason. Without reason it is blind, groping for any supernatural explanation it can grasp.

AA works if you find the higher power of your understanding. Mine,"the most formidable weapon against errors of every kind," is Reason. I trust I will never use any other weapon, a weapon which leads me to the positive conclusion that it is a power superior to all things available to man including the irrational prejudice of belief in God.

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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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A Response to Anthony "stjohnny" Horvath

On "Road-to-Damascus" type Revelations

To read the original blog by Horvast,click on Guest Author Rev. Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath

Note: I have been mistaken in the title to use for "sntjohnny." Here is what he wrote to me recently: "For quick reference- I am not a pastor or a reverend. I did finish the pastoral ministry degree in college which in many denominations is sufficient to receive ordination but in my denomination an additional four years on top of the bachelors degree is required- and I didn't do that. (and no complaints about it, either!)"

Introduction by Tony Horvath:

"Recently an atheist [Clark] stumbled upon my site and put [there]
a post responding to a post on my own blog on
the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ’special’ revelation.
The reader has all the information in the links above to follow this exchange, if they like.
"In my blog entry I indicated that many atheists won’t be convinced by anything less than their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Mr. Clark responds:"

Part Two, (or is it Three?)

Atheists don’t believe such revelations as "revealed" or "natural" are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. A revealed revelation, as Horvath points out, "concerns that which is known and can only be known because God himself reveals it." A "natural" revelation is one which comes through contemplation about the nature of existence.

Any "atheist" who could possibly be looking for a revelation, revealed or natural, would be a contradiction, in terms of what his beliefs were, as concerning the lack of a god who could give such revelations versus what he expected as either an epistemic or metaphysical quality of knowledge. In other words, he either believes no god exists, in which case no quality of knowledge can be called "revelation" in the religious sense; or he believes religious-type revelations are possible, in which case he is wrong about being atheist.

By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one’s mind is what he “knows.” This is sometimes called “justified true belief,” as opposed to “unjustified.” The justification comes from the soundness of the argument that there are only two choices: naturalism and supernaturalism; and from the soundeness of the proposition that faith is the negation of reason.

Theists, on the other hand, 'know,' by the same standard, that God exists. Atheists 'know' he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation, or even to expect that perhaps such a supernatural quality of knowledge will be imparted to him, implies that he knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.

You say I am engaged in an unnecessary discussion on what constitutes an atheist, that there are different kinds of atheists, including what we construe in technical terms as weak and strong atheists. You say your problem as a Christian Apologist is that these issues are largely an internal matter among atheists but each atheist insists on telling you what atheism absolutely is! "Atheism," you say, "reduces, ultimately, to each individual atheist’s perception of atheism."

My contention is that just as there cannot be such a thing as a strong chair vs. a weak chair--which would be what: anything not manufactured as a chair but which works as a chair anyway?--and just as there cannot be a thing such as a strong apple versus a weak apple......The point is, "chair", "apple", "naturalist," numismatist," and "atheist" are concepts. What is a weak concept versus a strong concept?

It is true that "naturalist" and "atheist" are concepts indicating epistemic determinations. But a definition is still a definition, and the only one that can be argued is the one that takes the idea to its logical extreme. Anything less than the extreme is less than the essence of the concept. Why debate things which are not the essence of the debate?You say you recently had one instance where you asked an atheist if he agreed that revelations were possible if one happened to him. He answered, “You’re asking me whether if god came to visit me (like some amplified Jehovah’s Witness) and explained the whole thing, then would that change my opinion? Uh, yes."

Tony, I myself will tell you the same thing: If God came to me it would be less than rational to ascribe his identity to him. But I will also tell you that since the concept of "atheist" means denial of the supernatural realm, asking your question is like asking whether one would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. Of course I would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. It isn't going to happen.

Let me tell you a story. Nearly three years ago I had what you and other believers would have described within your own beings as a "revelation." It truly was as if from God. I had an immediate apprehension of a truth, and the truth set me free, so free, in fact, that I went to a "church for alcoholics" within five minutes of having this apprehension, and I've been alcohol free ever since. The fellowship of A.A. has helped me to cope with my new life; but it was the apprehension which set me free.

That apprehension hit me as if I had been thrown against a brick wall at 60 miles an hour. It physically hurt. If I was a weaker man in my constitution, I might have run off the road and hit a house, a pedestrian, or another car. It was all I could do to keep driving and to remember where the Alano Club was.

I was shaking in my shoes. I had a hard time finding my voice. After my first A.A. meeting, someone asked if I was ok because she said I was pale as a ghost. I don't think I recovered my normal color for more than 24 hours, and not until after my fifth A.A. meeting in that same 24 hour period. I know I could not even crack a smile until after that fifth meeting. It was a truly spiritual experience, the kind that every member of A.A. hopes to one day have, a bolt of lightening out of the blue.

The immediate apprehension is what a believer would call a "miracle," what he would call a "revelation." As a matter of fact, I call it a natural revelation, myself, but I do not admit that natural revelations admit of a God, or of any form of supernaturalism. Because I reject Boethius' call to "join faith to reason, isofar as is possible," because I reject faith as the abnegation of reason that all theologians say it is, I can only attribute my immediate apprehension to what is epistemologically called "intuition." Was this my own personal "Road to Damascus" type revelation?

"Intuition" is from the Latin "intuere," meaning to look at, and is "The direct and immediate apprehension by a knowing subject of itself, of its conscious states, of other minds, of an external world, of universals, of values or of rational truths." "Dictionary of Philosophy"; Runes; 1942

Step One of A.A. says I "admitted I was powerless over alcohol--that my life had become unmanageable." Oh how very true is that statement, in light of the life-altering immediate apprehension of my situation.

Step Two says I "came to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity." Again, in my immediate apprehension I most certainly did come to believe that.

So you might ask, what "greater power" do I believe in? It turns out to be the greater power of the mind than that of overt consciousness, the greater power that is within each of our subconscious minds to turn a problem over and over without our overt knowledge of this process. Man existed and was conscious and able to form language and ethics long, long before the pre-Socratics discovered the power of "thinking about thinking."

That subconscious power that allowed a more intellectually primative man to continue existing and to grow and to learn from his mistakes and to add knowledge to his impressively growing store of knowledge resides within each of us. If Thales had not grasped the element of "thinking about thinking," we would still be acting on the conscious level of Homo sapiens, instead of that of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Technically, Homo sapiens is said to have become extinct many tens of thousands of years ago. We are his only living cousin. But our name, Homo sapiens sapiens, means that we have the power to add sapience upon already existing sapience, that we are as a matter of fact the only species that is sapient of his own sapience, and that that is thus the determining virtue for distinguishing Man as the "rational animal."

It is not too far fetched to say that until men learned the art and science--not to mention the joy--of thinking about thinking, that he was not truly Homo sapiens sapiens. He was a potentiality, waiting for a time when he would have his first conscious experience with "immediate apprehension," viz, "intuition."

Tony, you say, "Perhaps the hang up is my phrase ‘looking for’ [a revelation,] which I think is actually the problem. Mr. Clark is resting his disbelief on the ’soundness of the argument’ but I maintain that a single contrary fact is enough to put an argument to bed. [ ] [L]et me just say that its difficult to imagine how God could possibly meet the burden of demonstration many atheists expect him to fulfill if they would immediately discount the evidence if it was actually provided."

The "soundness of the argument" is that there are two choices: naturalism, and supernaturalism; Reason, and faith. So-called "natural revelation" requires reason to determine the nature of the object in question; but it requires faith to place its nature in the category of "supernaturally created." Intuition as "immediate apprehension," by natural methods of human neurology and psychology, can account for both type of revelation, without resorting to supernaturalism.

No naturalist who is also atheist has any justified true belief in either kind of revelation of the supernatural. The naturalist who believes in 'natural' revelation is not an atheist. The person who believes in 'revealed' revelations is not a naturalist." "Natural" revelations are not revelations of metaphysical naturalism and have nothing to do with "intuition" as defined above.

You continued in your response to me: "Well, obviously the naturalist wouldn’t see the natural order as revelation about God. The phrase ‘revelation’ can still be rehabilitated, though, because if one wants to get to the bottom of just what reality is all about, than they are going to have to rely on more than just introspection. They’ll have to open their eyes and let the universe around them ‘tell’ them about itself. You cannot deduce the law of gravity. For that you must drop an object and allow it to ‘reveal’ its speed as it rushes to the earth."

And that, my friend, is exactly what "intuition" is when it is left devoid of any supernatural origins and overtones. Rune's Dictionary of Philosophy is not interested in determining where such "intuitions" come from. That is for science to decide, after which philosophers and theologians may argue what it means, and whether or not the epistemic roots of the investigation contained strict scientific integrity.

You also said, "Atheists may not be looking for evidence of revelation but my contention is that they ought to be, and that they ought to do so without prejudging the issue, because that would be circular reasoning." You base this on your premise that we must let the universe tell us about itself. In the sense that men "intuit" the information the universe provides us, I totally agree. We cannot see without looking.

And if some men intuit the supernatural in their seeing, it does not speak to what the universe is trying to tell us; it speaks only to the principles of epistemology and the accepted metaphysics of the one who says he sees.

Thank you, Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath, for the "back-and-forth" nature of our discussion. This is what human discussion is supposed to be. You, and I, and our readers, know that there are those out there in the world who could not have a dialectic such at we are having.

sntjohnny and I have agreed to keep this discussion going until we reach what each of us considers a good ending. It may happen every 10 days to two week, more or less, give or take, as we see fit. I will always be certain to link the threads together for you, as he did at the top of his piece.

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If God Doesn’t Exist of What Use is Belief?

Guest Article by Happy Hiram (Yahoo Answers)

http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=Aq2AEFUah4oRhkHkYheMJbmGxQt.;_ylv=3?show=FoIxsunVaa

Happy Hiram is a Yahoo Answers user I frequently ran into when I was using that forum. He sent me this piece and asked if I would like to publish it. It presented the logic of belief effectively enough that I thought it would add to the discussion. It is still my own personal epistemic position that "belief" as "faith" is the abdication of Reason. But Happy makes a good point here:

Would the world be a better place if children were never taught to believe in Santa Claus? I don’t think so. Would the world be a better place if adults believed in Santa Claus? I don’t think so. This puts me fairly in agreement with general opinion about an important question: Can believing in a fable provide a positive experience for an adult? What about belief in the fabled existence of God?

People of religious faith will now jump on me saying, “How dare you call God a fable?” Non-believers will criticize me for using the upper case G and reinforcing the myth. Well whether there is a God or not, he or she is not walking down Main St. Nor can I credibly attribute any action to God that would be believable to everyone. At best, objectively, his actions are mere allegations, (as in an Act of God, in law.) Based on the good and bad things that have been attributed to him, I suspect that all the witnesses are either biased or hostile, and all the evidence thus is tainted. For the sake of this article, lets assume God is a myth. Now I would like to examine the idea of God as a tool in human endeavors. What I am interested in is not does God exist, but what use is he?

The Pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon, the Mayan Temples, were purportedly built to please the gods. I suspect they were more about impressing people than of indulging in spirituality. Architecturally, God and religion seem very much intertwined with keeping folks in line, and under someone’s thumbs.

Great laws and moral codes come from virtually every religious tradition, and at their core they are often similar. But religion hasn’t done such a good job of living up to those values. The great organs of faith love to grant exceptions, bend precepts for earthly goals, and exaggerate and inflame differences. They defy their own rules for reasons hardly consistent with their own basic values. Most non-believers are probably howling with derision while examining the outrages of the religions through history. But what about believing in a personal God? Shall we throw the individual out with the community?

There are other types of personal beliefs besides religion. I get very excited when I see the flag of the United States flying. I revere such things as the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free markets and rock ‘n roll. Sometimes these things are used to deceive, belittle, or alienate people. But I still choose to respect the flag. Am I a superstitious cretin?

Perhaps I am, because I also still respect the idea of God. There are those who say religion gives man dominion over nature meaning permission to exploit it to its limits. But I prefer the mythology of the creation that we are an equal part of. I think we need reminding that we are one with the animal kingdom. Most people fall into one of another of these models whether they believe in religion or not. So it can be an important question to ask yourself, and you may find yourself listing to the side of dominion, if you have no mythological creator to label you as a part of it all.

Some claim God is in every human, and whether this is true or not, it is often used to elevate humanity to a sacrosanct level. If everyone has god within and every man is god, then why not worship mankind and get rid of all the god nonsense?

I believe one of the main reasons for environmental degradation, jingoistic flag waving, religious conflict and government oppression is lack of humility. Pride, greed, anger and fear, when given license lead to the majority of negative behavior, whether you want to blame it on religion, politics or lack of faith. It is this human lack of self-restraint that is behind these global problems. Have philosophy, self-help courses, or psychological theories come up with an answer to this problem? Mostly no, but some men of faith have addressed the issue.

I look at it like this: imagine yourself on a great plain, the sun slowly setting in the west. Behind you, a shadow casts itself; huge and magnificent. But somewhere up ahead is something with a greater shadow. Is it God, the creator of all things, or some small insignificant thing, like a tin can? Whatever it is, it casts a much greater shadow than I do. I can use it to remind myself that I am just a man, a speck in the universe, but like that mysterious tin can, I cast a long shadow. Despite the illusion of my eyes telling me that I am the observer, the focus of my whole world, there is that tin can over there, outshining me. It helps keep my excesses in check.

For many, who find belief in God ridiculous, the universe may serve as this tin can. Or the knowledge of how unlikely and unbelievable is our luck to be on the right-sized planet with water that isn’t all frozen and such an unlikely abundance of flora and fauna. Or some may be humbled by the vast mystery of the human brain and of humanity’s creativity and diversity. But so many whether of faith or of no faith take no part in the task of being a humble worker and a part of the world. They strive to possess more to create just to have their name on things, to control people and nations and bend them to their whims. If a simple myth can help me to remain true to my real state in the world, then I will gladly use it. The other more abstract versions do not tend to stick for me; perhaps I am too ignorant to hold the universe front and center in my mind.

God has been used for many things, described in many conflicting ways. But I find the concept of God useful to remind me what I am.

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

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How Does An Atheist Navigate Alcoholics Anonymous?

Part II Working Within the A.A. Idea
Continued From Atheist Survival and Recovery in God-driven Alcoholics Anonymous

(All phrases you will read that are between " " are phrases written in approved A.A. literature. Any phrase you see in italics are phrases used in A.A. but are not necessarily part of any A.A. approved literature--like One Day At A Time, Easy Does It, or Keep Coming Back 'Till You Want to Come Back. I will supplement the official phrases with references, or with live web links from the Big Book, so you will be able to read it for yourself. The Big Book is online free, by the way, and you can--and should--look at it, either online or in a book. http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/
However, as authors will do, some of what you see in italics are my own writing of things I wish to set apart from the rest of the text.)

In AA we have "12 Traditions" as well as "12 Steps". Tradition One is "Our Common Welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on AA unity."

http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_appendicei.cfm

Entering an AA group, knowing people in that group are going to talk about God, higher powers, and spirituality, is for most atheists an unsettling experience. It was not unsettling for me--not in the beginning. I was familiar with A.A. through AlAnon, which is for people who have friends or family who are alcoholics.

Just being with that group helped keep me sober day by day, so that I did not drink in front of the person I was trying to understand and to help.

How do you become a member of a group? Tradition Three states: "The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking." That is important to remember for the atheist. It says nothing about membership requiring a "belief in God." It does not say membership requires a belief in a "higher power." But as I explain later, a "higher power" does not have to be supernatural, and having one actually does assist in staying sober.

http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_appendicei.cfm

I have heard many people say they came to their first A.A. meetings with a closed coffee mug full of booze; or that they went to a meeting every day without fail, then left the meeting to go get drunk with their friends.

But they had a desire to stop drinking. They simply didn't know the way, which is to listen, to learn, and to act on what you learn. If you get sober at an in-house clinic somewhere, they will probably use parts of the A.A. program, initiate you in it, and then on your way out the door tell you that the only way to remain sober is to keep going to A.A. meetings!

I was not unsettled by the religious people, at the first A.A. meeting that I went to for my own alcoholism, because I have no problem with religious people who don't try to preach. A.A., when done right, does not preach, but the moral messages it tries to inculcate can have many different personal applications.

At A.A., we take those parts of the messages we hear, the parts we need, and we leave the rest without concerning ourselves with it. That is why the "common welfare" of the group is so democratic that no one person can dominate it, no one person's idea(s) can dominate it, and all members' ideas must be tolerated, even ours, the atheists.

But I realized that I had to work the "12 Steps," and that they were steeped in "god." I had to work them or I would be in danger of slipping back into my old ways, feeling the old fears, the old dependencies for alcohol or drugs, whenever I might find myself in a familiar old situation that triggered the desire.

I knew I had to do the Steps because for five years I was in AlAnon. I saw my friend and many other people I met there become sober, civil, productive people again. I had no trouble accepting that A.A. does work.

How does it happen that we atheists can get away from this danger of feeling overwhelmed by god-driven fanatics who we think want us to believe in a higher power? We do it the same way everyone does--by listening to all the things said by other members, and then from those things we hear, by taking what we need and leaving the rest.

The AA Bible is called the "Big Book." That is not its name. Its name is "Alcoholics Anonymous." It has this to say about the change that we can effect in ourselves to prevent slipping back into the old needs, desires, habits and "character defects":

"The terms 'spiritual experience' and 'spiritual awakening' are used many times in this book which, upon careful reading, shows the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms."
[italics added] Appendix II, Spiritual Experience

http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_appendiceii.cfm

So how do we atheists get past god and the spiritual stuff? Well, that's the heart of the matter. It has many answers, because we are individuals, and for each of us there is a different set of criteria preventing us from a belief in god. A.A. knows that each of its religious believers is an individual, different in his or her beliefs, and no denomination is favored over another. Yes, there are Jewish A.A. groups, Islamic groups, Buddhist groups, and organized agnostic and atheist groups (very few and far between.)

But the majority of the groups are Christian-based. Yet, the Babtists don't force themselves on the Methodists who don't force themselves on anyone because no denomination in a general group can take precedence over another. A Catholic may speak from his or her experience as a Catholic and even state he/she is Catholic. This is good. It gives you something to reference within that speaker's words.

I have seen people in my home group accept what I have to say about some things, because I can see their eyes light up, or a smile come across their face, or I see them nodding in affirmation and sometimes I even hear someone say "Amen!" to my comments! If that is not acceptance, if that is not acceptance for the "common welfare" to let me speak in a god-based meeting, and if that is not acceptance I see and hear and feel from my fellow members, then I don't know what is.

Without describing each of the categories, there are "weak" atheists and "strong" atheists--so say many atheists. I don't say that. To me an atheist is an atheist, someone who thinks, believes, or knows there is no god.

But the differences exist between us apparently because some atheists can actually believe god exists, but have no belief in it/him. These kinds of atheists can actually have beliefs in other supernatural things like ghosts, card and tea-leaf readings, and astrology.

Then there are those atheists who believe god does not exist, but don't know and don't care. Do you see the quicksand we could get into trying to figure it all out? It isn't important in this context. If you want to know more there are books, and websites devoted to the subject. But the cause of the quicksand is the cause of the problem of how each individual atheist gets over the "god thing," he/she finds in A.A. I'll tell you what I've discovered: A.A. says it only has to be a "god of your understanding." [Steps 3 and 11]
http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_bigbook_chapt5.pdf

Notwithstanding the use of the word god, you and any other atheist who wants to get sober can find something that is a "power greater than himself." [Step 2]

So it turns out it is really up to you to figure that out for yourself. I've been a die-hard "there is no god" atheist all my life, yet I can now easily talk about my realtionship to a higher power when I am in the group, and I can even reference the god that everyone else believes in. I know that because of my willingness to sit in a meeting and discuss how I stay sober using A.A. while at the same time remaining atheist, at least one other atheist, possible more, have joined my group.

This is because my group is comfortable with me, and I am comfortable with them. One of the other atheists said her former home group made her feel uncomfortable. When ever any group makes you feel uncomfortable for any reason, not just religious reasons, it is probably better to find yourself another regular group, which is what a home group is. Your home group is the one you attend most often, but not necessarily all the time. You attend it because it feels like home, in a way.

Unless you believe the soul absolutely does not exist, [see Part I for a more complete description of this phenomenon] not even as something that dies with you, then you will come to discover the reason that group feels like home is a spiritual reason.

By using the group, not god, as your "higher power," you will begin to make "conscious contact" with "God as you understand him." My own such understanding is simply that within my understanding, god is just the power we call the laws of nature. But one of my sponsors told me that if I can have a spiritual experience while contemplating nature, such as during the stereotype of laying on the ground staring into space, then I have conscious contact with the "god of my understanding." Since he is a very religious man, I accepted his advice to use that as my understanding.That might have been the best advise I ever got from a sponsor.

But it's a good thing while trying to understand A.A. to ask a lot of questions from someone you trust who is already in A.A., rather than trying to figure out by yourself what the statements in the books mean. This is because taken at face value they often mean something other than when another chapter, paragraph, sentence, phrase, or Step is taken into consideration. Everything in life has "contextual meaning," and the words of the Big Book are no exception. It took a religious man to tell me that as an atheist I already had my own "conscious contact with the god of my understanding."

Whether you like the idea of being in a "god" group or not doesn't matter. One of the truths of being in a group is stated in an informal A.A. slogan. It says, I get drunk; We stay sober. In other words, there is power in belonging to a group.

When we don't have a reason not to not get drunk, we won't. You may think you can't help it, that you try to drink just one beer, wine, or mixed drink, but then you find yourself unable to stop.

You're right. You can't help it--alone. The second part of that phrase, We stay sober, means that when you have a support group made of people who are just like you because they can't stop getting drunk when they only want one drink, then as part of a group, "we" stay sober.
There is another informal saying in A.A. that is very appropriate for the atheist. It begins in the form of a question that millions of people have actually asked when they start going to meetings. The informal saying is the answer.

Q: How long do I have to keep going (coming) to A.A.?
A: Until you have the desire to want to come to A.A.

I am not the first atheist who accepts that A.A. can work for him/her. I am not the first atheist who had to negotiate the tricky propostions of the god problem. I will not be the last, and I hope you will not let the god problem stop you from seeking help.

Your life may depend on it; you may have been sentenced by a court to attend; your family may have begged you to go; you may be losing your home, your job, everything that is valuable to you. Don't let a little thing like an idea you don't like stop you from selfishly using an A.A. group to lean on. They won't mind it if you don't bash their god-ideas. And if they bash your no-god ideas, find another group, or talk to someone in that group you trust.

Look for Part III late next week.

For some outside perspectives, read the Comments on the link below.
http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/04/10/discussion-atheists-in-alcoholics-anonymous.htm