Tradition Two, As Learned from Experience by an Atheist

For the group purpose, a loving God as He may express Himself in the group conscience is the ultimate authority, as I put it in my own words rather than quote it. I know I don't have it wrong. That's what it says.

God didn't want me attending the group conscience meetings of my home group. I used to attend them. I only missed two in more than two years. But at the last one that I missed, the group conscience decided to move the meeting to a night I could not attend.

Now, if I could not attend because of my own personal commitments, such as piano lessons, or because a judge ordered me to do community service, I would understand.

But I could not attend because I was the elected representative for that group to Intergroup. Intergroup's schedule was well known: first and third Monday of each month. My home group decided to move its conscience meeting to an evening hour, from a 1:00 pm hour, ostensibly so “more people could show up.” But it turns out that it was precisely so the “right people” could show up. Those “right people” were the elders, the one's who had started the group. They had commitments during the 1:00 pm hour. I understand that. Strange thing is, now fewer people show up.

What I don't understand is why their God chose to make it very night that He knew I had an elected meeting to attend for the very group that was choosing to exclude me.

When I found out about this change, I asked one of those elders about it. He said that was the “group conscience speaking”. I asked why it had to be Monday and not some other night. He answered that Monday was the night the group conscience chose. I asked if that could be changed so that I could continue to go to the group conscience meetings. He flatly said no, that it was the group conscience that it should be that particular Monday.

Now, I liked my group. Of course when I spoke of my experience, strength or hope it was often contrary to the members who believed in God, but that group has a “no cross-talk” rule that includes criticizing other people's testimony. But most of the time I was thanked afterward for speaking my mind. Sometimes the thanks came from one of the elders. Sometimes it came from other atheists. Sometimes it just came from someone who was able to take away from my words something he or she needed to hear.

One time it was from a visitor from out of town, who thanked me for telling other people who might have a problem with the “God part” of A.A. to “just keep coming back” because they could always find a reason at the table that would help them stay strong. That particular time I even said that the Big Book says we must go to any length necessary, and while I didn't find it necessary to seek God after nearly 4 years in A.A., maybe they would come to the conclusion that for them it was necessary. Good for them! I said. Whatever it takes! Just keep coming back!

So I was not a pariah in my group. I didn't always speak contrarily; sometimes I affirmed the topic even while denying that God had any part in it for me. It was because I was able to say how I could do it without God that I often got the most comments after the meeting. thanks from people who also found it hard to accept that God would have a hand in some particular thing in their lives. Often they were agnostics who leaned more toward a belief in God than a non-belief.

When I heard that the group's conscience meeting could not be changed because it was the group conscience, I immediately thought of this Tradition. After some personal thinking, I told one of the group's elders I had my own conscience problem: I could not be the conscience of that group at the Intergroup meetings when I could not attend the group conscience meetings.
Funny thing is, that elder thought I meant I was quitting Intergroup so I could attend the group conscience meetings. I said no, I wanted to stay with Intergroup, so I become the representative for another group, one that I had helped create: Atheists and Spirituality, group # 688207. I am also the GSR for that group.

After more thinking, I have subsequently quit the first group altogether. I do not need to attend a meeting where God, as the ultimate authority, has decided I am not to be. I don't blame God, however. Atheists don't believe God exists, so I must blame it all on the people who first voted to put me on Intergroup, and then decided that I no longer needed to attend the group's conscience meetings.

At least when my atheist group has conscience meetings, we are honest and blame any consequences on ourselves. We don't foist it off on God. I'll bet if I asked God, he would rather see the group meet another night so I could go back to being part of the the group conscience, and go back to the group itself in order to fulfill the Responsibility Statement, which I hold near and dear. The atheists' group closes with it.

Perhaps this article will help those whose thinking is entrenched in the idea that no one can make it in A.A. without God, as to why so many people who don't have God do not make it in A.A.: they are not met with “the hand of A.A.” which does not demand belief. Instead, they are met with the hand of people who tell them they will fail without God, that Dr. Bob said we who try to make it on our own are to be “pitied”, and that when God says something through the group, that's the way it's got to be—it can't be changed.

And that is what I mean by being honest and blaming such decisions on the people in the group, not on God. Those people could have decided on the second Monday if they wanted Monday; or on the first Tuesday if they wanted it in the first week of the month. Instead, God said it had to be the first Monday, and that's that.

I just turned 55, and I've been atheist since I was 4. You are not going to change me. But as long as I keep coming back I can always find a way to stay clean and sober, because I have a desire to stop drinking, our only requirement.

No, it wasn't God who wanted me out of the group. The elders who thought the first Monday of the month was the only appropriate day they would settle for wanted me out, because it was they who voted to make me the Intergroup representative. They didn't want me out of the group itself, but out of the conscience meetings. Why, I still don't know. They said God wanted it that way.

Alcoholics can get sober without god, since there is none.
Bill Wilson was wrong about self-will; but we must direct our will toward what keeps us sober. A higher power (HP) is no power at all if it doesn't help us. But as you will read in the page titled Higher Power, Part 2, that HP does not necessarily need to be outside yourself. ©

The Atheist AA,
The Atheist AA Blog,
and the Google group
Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

Atheist Church

"[W]hether atheism is a 'religion' for First Amendment purposes is a somewhat different question than whether its adherents believe in a supreme being, or attend regular devotional services, or have a sacred Scripture. The Supreme Court has said that a religion, for purposes of the First Amendment, is distinct from a 'way of life,' even if that way of life is inspired by philosophical beliefs or other secular concerns. See Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 215-16, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972)."

Several courts have also ruled that atheists cannot be assigned to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous as part of their sentencing guidlines for alcohol related convictions.

In Kaufman v. McCaughtry, 419 F.3d 678 Kaufman argues that the prison officials violated his constitutional rights when they refused to give him permission to start a study group for atheist inmates at the prison, that the defendants' refusal to permit him to meet with other atheist inmates to study and discuss their beliefs violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

At one time it was thought (by some) that this right [referring to the right to choose one's own creed] merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism.

It was not thought to be this way by Jefferson and some of the other Founders. Jefferson wrote in his auobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom, which pre-dated the Constitution:

"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting 'Jesus Christ,' so that it would read 'A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

So when the underlying principle had been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all.

Atheism was Kaufman's religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being. As he explained in his application, the group wanted to study freedom of thought, religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals, and practices, all presumably from an atheistic perspective.

That is the definition of a church for the practice of understanding it. The First Free Church of Atheism exists for the study of freedom of thought, religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals, and practices, all from an atheistic perspective.

There is nothing more, nothing less, in its purpose.

Alcoholics can get sober without god, since there is none.
Bill Wilson was wrong about self-will; but we must direct our will toward what keeps us sober. A higher power (HP) is no power at all if it doesn't help us. But as you will read in the page titled Higher Power, Part 2, that HP does not necessarily need to be outside yourself. ©

The Atheist AA,
The Atheist AA Blog,
and the Google group
Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

I don't blog here much. Mostly I'm over at the Atheist AA Google Group, the Alcoholics Anonymous group for agnostics and atheists.

But I thought I would take a moment to wish everyone a happy holiday, including Merry Christmas. If you think atheists shouldn't appreciate Christmas anymore than they should be in the God-driven Alcoholics Anonymous groups, you have some more thinking to do.

Here is a wonderful piece written by Ankar Ghate about why he, as an atheist, in in love with Christmas.

To visit the Atheists Alcoholics Anonymous Group, you can click on the badge on the right, or on the title of this piece. The group is not associated with A.A. Worldwide.

Curtis C

Alcoholics can get sober without god, since there is none.
Bill Wilson was wrong about self-will; but we must direct our will toward what keeps us sober. A higher power (HP) is no power at all if it doesn't help us. But as you will read in the page titled Higher Power, Part 2, that HP does not necessarily need to be outside yourself. ©

The Atheist AA,
The Atheist AA Blog,
and the Google group
Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

Bill and Bob's Prejudice

Sometimes I find it funny, yet terribly unsettling, when someone makes public statements that show them to be without the knowledge they need if they are to make statements purporting them to be knowledgeable on a given subject.

A case in point that just came to my attention are the comments [see] made by one "Lisa" to the editor@positiveatheism.org. I don't know what comments were originally made by this .org, but we can get a good presumption by reading "Lisa"'s comments:

"Where does it say in the Big Book that we have to get rid of prejudice?...It is very sad that people are so closed minded that they see and hear things that are not even being said. .."

Not even being said? Lisa seems to "see no evil", nor hear it, assuming she has ever been to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where the Big Book was actually being read.

I recently took my turn speaking at the table on a subject, and from my own "experience, strength, and hope" I spoke about finding a higher power that was not a supernatural deity. No sooner than I was done than someone else began to "counterpoint" what I had said---by quoting Dr. Bob:

"If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book, I feel sorry for you." Big Book page 181

And there is this, from page 56: "In this book you will read the experience of a man who thought he was an atheist. [ ] His change of heart was dramatic, convincing, and moving...He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator."

Bill and Bob seemed to believe, as Bill wrote, that "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis" left only one alternative, and that was God. But spiritualism has nothing to do with God, except to those who would lead us away from what is to found within us no matter what name you put to it.

Ahh, yes, that pesky idea of what is "natural": "...in fact, we could will [recovery] with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly." (page 45)

Poor, poor Bill, not to have what I have. It must be terrible to be in such need of a power outside one's self.

It is also terribly unsettling when someone makes public statements that show them to be without the knowledge they need if they are to make statements purporting them to be knowledgeable on a given subject.I am atheist, since the age of four, on principle. Yet I had one of those powerful spiritual experiences Bill said people sometimes have in the beginning, yet which some never have though they may die sober.

If acceptance of god as your higher power is the length necessary for you to go to become and reamain sober, more power to you. Unlike the intellectually prideful Dr. Bob, I don't pity anyone for going to the necessary lengths; but neither do I pity them if they find their necessary length to to go is shorter than what Bill and Bob had to succumb to.

Alcoholics can get sober without god, since there is none. Bill Wilson was wrong about self-will; but we must direct our will toward what keeps us sober. A higher power (HP) is no power at all if it doesn't help us. But as you will read in the page titled Higher Power, Part 2, that HP does not necessarily need to be outside yourself. ©

The Atheist AA,

The Atheist AA Blog,

and the Google group Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

Atheists in Alcoholics Anonymous

Should atheists go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings? I say yes, but I also say "it depends". It depends on the particular meeting you go to.

Some meetings are very god-oriented. That is their right, according to the "Traditions" and the "Concepts" of AA, which state that every group is autonomous. Every group must operate according to its own "conscience". Most groups have regular consciousness meetings, which are sometimes called "business" meetings, or "steering committees". If any particular group wants to make god the dominant theme of its meeting, that is its right.

It is also AA Tradition that no one can be asked to leave a meeting just because the other attendees don't like the message you are proclaiming as yours. But it doesn't seem wise to go into such a group and stir things up. I stir things up at meetings that are less god-oriented, meetings that accept the message of AA on the issue of god but which do not make it the one, over-riding theme of their group. I do not stir things up to be contrary. I do it because it is my AA right; so I choose my groups and only attend those that show tolerance toward other points of view.

A "newbie" in AA might wish to be careful about being contrary. Most groups don't allow "cross talking", and that usually means addressing directly what someone else has said in a contrary manner. It might be seen as taking someone else's inventory, a strict no-no anywhere you go.

But if you speak from your own "experience, strength, or hope", then no one can say you are not allowed to disagree with the AA approved literature. The Big Book itself admits that there was a lot of controversy in the first few years about what should be the official stance of the groups, and about who could say what about what. The reason that the Twelve Steps talk about your god "as you understand him" is because so many early member objected to language that put them in one box together, all praying to the same god.

And as logic would have it, many of those early members, and even more today I would suppose, have a different conception of how they understand "god". Some of them don't see god as a deity at all, but rather as the forces of nature.

But in order for an atheist to feel comfortable in a group that does have many virtues, the biggest being its ability to keep people sober who want to be sober, that atheist ought to be in a group where he/she feels comfortable speaking about his/her disbelief or atheism. You may have to point out to some recalcitrant, beligerant members that you have as much right to speak as they do.

The General Service Organization, the headquarters of AA, puts out a publication called "Box 459", and in an early 2009 edition it published a story of a man who uses a GI Joe doll as his higher power! That same GSO is the one who gave my atheist home group a registration number and lists it in its directory right alongside all the god-oriented groups.

But for the same reason as a Catholic member will not (or should not) argue against a Pagan or Southern Baptist member's point of view, we atheists cannot be beligerant and argue against the god position of AA, unless we do it as everyone must: from our own experiences, strengths, and hopes, not on the contrary opinions of others.

And if others take issue in the meeting with out point of view, we have the right to call "Point of Order" and politely set them straight. No one is allowed in a meeting to criticize the beliefs or positions of other members. The old timers who value the Traditions will have your back, even if they don't like your message.

Alcoholics can get sober without god, since there is none. Bill Wilson was wrong about self-will; but we must direct our will toward what keeps us sober. A higher power (HP) is no power at all if it doesn't help us. But as you will read in the page titled Higher Power, Part 2, that HP does not necessarily need to be outside yourself. ©

The Atheist AA,
The Atheist AA Blog,
and the Google group Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

Atheism As Justified True Belief

Acceptance of "the Given" [1] *

Atheism is a not a belief system for those who know there is no supernatural entity by any name.

How can anyone know this? The same way anyone can know anything--as a "justified true belief". [2]

First, something must be accepted as true. This is stated in logic as

• 1. p is true

Then the person accepts the statement as fact. For example, the sky is blue represents the form of "p is true." Therefore,

• 2. Mary believes p is true

And finally, because p is true

• 3. Mary is justified in believing the sky is blue.

"Mary believes the sky is blue" is not a belief "system." It is a statement about what Mary believes about the statement "p is true."

In this way a justified true belief is a statement about one's acceptance of what is classified as a "given."

[1] "A skyscraper is a man-made fact, a mountain is a metaphysically given fact...Nature is the metaphysically given—i.e., the nature of nature is outside the power of any volition." Ayn Rand

[2] The Analysis of Knowledge; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

* Originally published here in April, '09.

Alcoholics can get sober without god, since there is none.
Bill Wilson was wrong about self-will; but we must direct our will toward what keeps us sober. A higher power (HP) is no power at all if it doesn't help us. But as you will read in the page titled Higher Power, Part 2, that HP does not necessarily need to be outside yourself. ©

The Atheist AA,
The Atheist AA Blog,
and the Google group
Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

Sobriety As A Higher Power

I am a life-long atheist. 50 years I've been an atheist and I only turn 55 this year. I remember sitting in Sunday School class at the age of 4 thinking, "God doesn't exist, and Jesus doesn't love me because he's dead."

Then I became an alcoholic.

Then I got sober by making use of Alcoholics Anonymous. This blog will chronicle my thoughts about being atheist in a god-driven spiritual program.

I have no problem with spirituality. It's just that spiritualism isn't supernatural, and where ever that spiritual feeling within the body comes from neurologically, it is borne from the consciousness of a biological entity and it dies with that body, with that consciousness, with that life.

Atheists are not supposed to believe in the spirit, so I've heard. But then, what do I call that overwhelming feeling of love for my own life, for the lives of other people I love, and for that sense of wonder that is my own intelligent understanding of the nature of the existence of existence?

Since I don't believe in supernaturalism, that makes me some sort of naturalist. The naturalists can't decide on common definitions for themselves; but in any case they all claim not to believe in free will. Since I will stay sober if I do what I'm supposed to do, I guess I believe in free will because I'm free to continue day by day to do one of two things: pick up a drink---or not pick up a drink. So maybe I'm not a naturalist, but I'm atheist and I'm alcoholic.

"Alcohol...bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands," it say in the AA book the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.¹ I hate words that rob me of my humanness, and telling me I have no will of my own with which to overcome my boo-boos whether they are physical or mental robs me.

That is, until we find the will to resist its demands. That is the power of being human, I content. The traditional AA will say it is god's will, not ours, or something to that effect.

Well, believe what you will. And within that idea that we believe what we will lies the idea that what you believe is what you will to believe. Otherwise, you would have to say you were forced by god to believe what you will. That sounds contradictory to me.

When I found the will to resist alcohol it was after years of soul searching; and while the actual realization--and the subsequent admission--that I was powerless over alcohol came over me in one brief, explosive moment, it must be admitted that I am powerless when I take a drink, not when I don't take a drink. If I will not take a drink, then I will stay sober.

1 © Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics can get sober without god, since there is none.
Bill Wilson was wrong about self-will; but we must direct our will toward what keeps us sober. A higher power (HP) is no power at all if it doesn't help us. But as you will read in the page titled Higher Power, Part 2, that HP does not necessarily need to be outside yourself. ©

The Atheist AA,
The Atheist AA Blog,
and the Google group
Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC