A.A. Gets Honest with Clergy about Atheists and Agnostics

A.A. puts out a pamphlet, #25, called Members of the Clergy ask about Alcoholics Anonymous. It makes for some very interesting reading. It appears that A.A. is willing to tell the clergy things that it has a problem saying to the membership in general.

For example, in the Introduction, 3rd paragraph, it states:

• "It would be unrealistic to assume that all A.A. members are spiritually inspired. Many, too, are not committed to a formal body of religious doctrine."

The second sentence is so obvious it's almost a non-starter. But the first sentence is a shocker. To hear that it is "unrealistic" to expect everyone in a God-driven program to be spiritually inspired is like saying "the god of your understanding is not important". Of course, there is no reason except tradition to link a god to "spirituality", since I am a spiritual person without a god. But A.A. doesn't link them together, either, at least not if you say one sentence "necessarily follows" the other, because it doesn't necessarily follow, and A.A. doesn't make it out to be that way.

But the next section of the pamphlet makes it clear that A.A. is indeed "religiously oriented", because they tell the clergy that A.A. is "a nonsectarian, nondenominational ally in their efforts to help alcoholics..." It would not be necessary to disclaim any link to a sect or a denomination if AA was entirely "sectarian".

" Sectarian groups are religious, political or ideological organizations whose services are limited to a particular sect..." So A.A. makes the truthful claim that they do not ally with any sect in particular, but we must assume that they are not secularist or they would plainly say so.  Instead, they claim "non-sectarianism", the same as Universalist-Unitarian churches.

And yet, speaking of the honesty shown to the clergy, A.A. says that "Nonalcoholics attending an A.A. meeting for the first time are often surprised to note...[that] some members recount their drinking experience [in] a decidedly agnostic tone..."

If the GSO already knows this, why don't they tell those yokels down in Georgia who believe in the Christian God alluded to in the A.A. Big Book as though it was the Bible?

And under the heading of "Is Religious Belief Part of the A.A. Program?" the pamphlet specifically states:

"Individual members are free to interpret these values as they think best, or not to think about them at all." [emphasis added] 

And going on, where the Big Book tells us several times in different ways that we will "find a higher power" or "find God", etc., this pamphlet merely says that members "will in time find an answer to this distinctly personal dilemma."

Step Two says we will come to believe in a power greater than ourselves; Step Three says we turn our will over to "the care of God as we understood him"; Step Five says we "Admitted to God"; and on and on. 

But we are guided in the Steps by the Traditions, including Two: "For our purpose there is but one ultimate authority--a loving God..."

Then this little pamphlet tells the clergy that "The Traditions are not formally binding on A.A. groups." Period.

Show that one sentence to any person in A.A., even one who is not necessarily religious but still adheres to A.A. as closely as he can, and he will look at you with open eyed astonishment and say, "But!---then how is A.A. supposed to work? Those are our working guidelines!" I know this happens because I've shown it to people, and most of them are none to happy to see it in print. That makes it official.

There is more out there in our official material than we know about. How many dozen books have I never even laid eyes on, like all those from the Grapevine?

Never let another member tell you there is only one way to do things in A.A. The book "Living Sober" states, "There is no wrong A.A. way and no right A.A. 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. ©

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and the Google group Atheist AA

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I Am My Own Higher Power When I Am Sober

I did what anyone including you can do--I found truth and new ideas in old ideas.

Neither John Locke nor Emile Rousseau wrote about "individual sovereignty", and yet Jefferson and his friends were able to extrapolate from the writings of Locke and Rousseau on the subject of "popular sovereignty" the individualistic aspect. "Popular" sovereignty gains its "consent of the governed" because the sovereign individual consents; no one can do what they have no power to do, and therefore the power resides first in the individual, secondly in the republic.

By the same method, I extrapolated from Paul, in Romans VII, that I have the will power to be my own "higher power" so long as I do the "next right thing". [Note for the uninitiated: "next right thing" is a 12 Step phrase that means instead of not doing what we know we ought not to, we instead do what we see that we ought to do, even if it is painful to do. It means we do not ignore the "right thing" when we see it.]

In Romans 7, beginning with Verse 15, Paul said (with some editing to fit the context of how I came to my extrapolation),

¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is [alcoholism] living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good [is possible] in me [so long as I continue drinking], that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do [in my alcoholic state] is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is [not the sober] I who do it, but it is [the insanity of alcoholism] living in me that does it.[Thank you to the New International Version for your online publication.]

 And so I am able to state, contrary to the Alcoholics Anonymous "Big Book", that I am my own "higher power" when I stay sober. It is when I do not drink, and when I have stayed away from alcohol long enough to recover some of my ability to see more clearly those things that alcohol robs me of the power to see, that I can do the "next right thing" time and time again. 

It is when we are actively using alcohol that we are unable to prevent ourselves in most cases from doing the right thing. We drink, then we drive, argue with the bartender, become aggressive when someone else pays attention to our significant other, we puke from the effects of alcohol on our systems, piss on the floor, pass out on someone's couch, and accomplish many other things in which we find our shame the next day.

It is when we are not drinking, when we are sober and actively working to remain a non-drinker, that we are able to begin doing the right things more often than we did the wrong things. "We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness," Bill W. wrote in the Big Book. "Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change." [Chapter Six, "Into Action"]

Paul was saying that it is "sin" in his body that causes him to do wrong, and sin in his body that prevents him doing right, even when he sees the right and the wrong. "Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

We atheists, and some agnostics, do not see sin as a substance capable of controlling our bodies, and we certainly do not see God as the way out of our misery.

But if we take that First Step and admit that we engage in wrong behavior when we drink, and that only when we are sober can we rationally analyze these two sides of our behavior and their causes, then we are implicitly admitting that we are "powerless" when we drink. By the same token, we have a higher power to be rational when we do not drink. So we explicitly take the First Step, admitting we are powerless over our own actions when we consume alcohol.

Since the power of reason is within my own mind--it is not something in the ether, or something in the water, or something in the act of accepting the supernatural--that I begin to diminish the insanity of irrationality by staying sober.

I am my own lowest power when I drink--not the devil, not "sin in my body", not supernatural demons who possess me, but me.

Reason is power. Irrationality makes me powerless to do the next right thing. I always want to do the next right thing, just like Paul. Paul admitted he was powerless over evil without God and Jesus by his side. 

I admit I am powerless over doing what I know is right, and powerless sometimes to keep from doing what I know is wrong, when I do not have the higher power of reason on my side instead of a bottle in my hand.

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,
The First Free Church of Atheism

and the Google group
Atheist AA

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An Atheist's Steps Two and Three

Someone in the Atheist AA Google Group wrote to say he was beginning his 2nd and 3rd steps. Did anyone have any advice? I replied to him this way:

Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I used to use the "tables", the "fellowship", etc as my higher power. I had a very good, Christian man as my second sponsor and even though he knew I was atheist, he helped me to see that I had my own "understanding" of God as merely the power that rules the universe. No sentient being "created" it; but there are physical laws at work.

Then after 3 years in AA I came to realize that I was my own higher power when I stayed sober. Now that is completely contradictory to the Big Book, which says we must have a power higher than ourselves.

But at a 3rd step meeting full of Christians I explained that when I was drinking I always wondered why I could not do what I knew was right, and why I kept doing the things that always proved themselves to be wrong. Most of the time I even knew they were wrong before I did them.

Why couldn't I do the right things? I tortured myself over this for many years, but never once told myself that alcohol was the beginning of the problem.

Then one day I had a "miracle of my understanding" (obviously not from a sentient deity). But it was immediate and powerful and extremely painful, because I swear I did most of the steps in the span of 1/10 of a second.

1.  In one fell swoop I admitted I was powerless over alcohol, that my life had become unmanaged (not unmanageable).
2. Made a decision to do what I knew at that moment was right, and went to my first AA meeting.
3. I had made a searching but fearsome inventory of myself, or I would not have gone to AA.
4. I admitted to myself only, since there was no one in the car with me, what I knew about my wrongs.
5. I was entirely ready to let AA show me the way out of my problems.
6. I wanted out of my shortcomings, but of course it wasn't god who was going to do it for me; at least not a deity.
7. I was ready at that very 1/10 of a second to make amends for all the wrongs I had done people.
8. I sought the power to accomplish what I needed to do. AA was the right first step. I knew that.
9. I knew that I had had a remarkable spiritual awakening, but as I said it was fearsome. I can completely understand why some old-fashioned Christians thought God was angry and would bring down His wrath. I felt as if I had been hit by a ton of bricks.

So after that 3rd step meeting, a man approached me and said, "What you said about not being able to do the right thing and always doing the wrong thing and not knowing why, is what Paul said in Romans 7." And he thanked me for my insight.

I related this to my own sponsor, also an atheist, and he chuckled. He said, "It is remarkable that we atheists often see religious principles better than some who call themselves religious." It seems to be intuitive with us. We know what we do not agree with and we figure out why, so then we know that the religious people have sometimes only accepted on faith often without ever giving it that second thought that we give it.

So if you have the right sponsor, one who knows you cannot give in to a deity, or be humble enough to get on your knees, you will be able to work it through.

I wish you all the luck, and hope that your sponsor is someone who understands you and can actually show you a good direction to go.

Sincerely,

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,
The First Free Church of Atheism

and the Google group
Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

Paul in Romans 7; and My Addiction

My higher power is my self---when I am sober and sane. It isn't supposed to be that way in Alcoholics Anonymous; you can't be your own Higher Power because "The alcoholic at certain times has not effective mental defense against the first drink. [ ] His defense must come from a Higher Power." Chapter Three

Incredibly, there is no mention of Higher Power in chapters 1 or 3, and not again until chapter 7 where it says, 

"Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances."

Well, that is what I do every day, and the way I saw through to my higher power as myself was brought to my attention two days ago, by someone who heard me speak at a Third Step meeting. He said I had incredibly spoken the ideas of Paul in Romans 7.

I only read parts of the Bible, when I need to research something it may (or may not) say. So let me tell you what I said, then relate it to what Paul said.

I said that we all do things when we are using that we don't like, not the least of which is to use at all. We wake up with hangovers, having been in blackouts we don't remember things, we sometimes wake up jail wondering how we got there, and I said we use "descriptive egoism" to explain it.

Those "explanations" would be "My wife pissed me off so I went to the bar." "I hit the wall so I wouldn't hit my kid, and broke my hand." "I wrecked the car" or I threw a tantrum or I quit or got fired, or I spent all my money because...

That because those are "descriptive" of what we think were our reasons, but when we get sober we know they were all just excuses and rationalizations. Somewhere inside each of us is the knowledge that there is something better, because when we do what we rationalize, we ask ourselves why we didn't do what we knew was the right way, or the better way, instead of doing the way we did it.

We see other people doing things the right way. They're relatively happy, sometimes ecstatically happy. And they don't ever seem to do the wrong thing. We wonder if they even have a concept of "the wrong thing", or if they do have it, whether they are ever tempted to follow it.

When we hit bottom it is the horrible realization that all those thoughts of goodness, of the right thing to do, of the better way to do things that we knew in our minds and felt in our hearts, was what we could have done if we had hit bottom sooner, or if we had never chosen the irrational path of destruction in the first place.

St. Paul, in Romans 7, in the New International Version, said this:

¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, [i.e., "stay clean"] I agree that the law is good. ^18[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil [the using, in our case]  I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it." 

That "sin living in me" is the powerlessness I have when I take the first drink. But it is also the lack of desire to prevent that first drink, by whatever means necessary. Call your friends in AA or out of AA if they understand; call your sponsor, or call somone and ask her to be your sponsor; but do something.

When I am clean and sober I am doing what I did not want to do before, as seen in Paul's verse 16; or what I could not do before I saw, or before I knew, how to do what was the opposite of the way I had always done before. 

 

The difference is, that after I get sober and work the Steps or my own customized program, I am no longer like Paul who does what he does not want to do without him knowing why--because now I do not want to do what I used to do, and I do know why.

 

 

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,
The First Free Church of Atheism,
and the Google group
Atheist AA

are all © or ^SM of the

Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC

There Is No Higher Power

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 and Alcoholics

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 Alcoholics and a Higher Power

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

Calling All Atheist or Agnostic Alcoholics!

Where are the atheist alcoholics who either shun Alcoholics Anonymous, or who put up with it? So far not many seem to have found this blog, nor have they found Google Group Atheist AA. (Click there, or on the button to the right of this column.)

This should be a national movement! It may be a small one, but that is beside the point. Alcoholics Anonymous does accept atheists and must do so according to Tradition Three.

• And although Step Two says everyone comes to believe that a Power greater than themselves is the means by which everyone will recover
• And although Step Two is demeaning and insulting
• although the first two bullets are true, the synopsis of this Step on page 5 of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions clearly states: "A.A. does not demand belief; Twelve Steps are only suggestions.

And while the Big Book says that we do not ally ourselves with any sect or demonination, and it says we do not call ourselves "Presbyterian" groups or the like, the truth is that it allows atheist groups to include the word "atheist" and "agnostic" (but not "atheism" or "agnosticism"--the GSO doesn't accept "isms".)

The Atheist AA Google Group does not sell a product and doesn't tell anyone how they ought to think or believe. Agnostics are welcome. So if you want a rational place to spout or just to comment, join us! Help us grow this group.

Be all you can be as a recovering alcoholic!

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