Hopefully, the discussion from this thread can be continued here.
AA is a religious organization. Spiritul, not religious,is just a cover in my opinion.
There is a higher power which you pray to. Whether you call it God, Allah, or the Bajoran prophets, you are giving superhuman powers to an object or deity.
Proselytization is also suggested: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
I find it interesting that AA goes to such lengths to deny that it is a religious organization. Sounds a lot like a cult to me.
One can’t seriously argue that AA is a medical treatment for the so-called disease of alcoholism. In the 21st century, we should be rightfully scorned for thinking that the 12 steps have anything to do with treating disease in a medical way. You wouldn’t treat cancer by making amends to those you have harmed.
I have no problem with prayer or religion. Still, I think that if it walks like a religion and talk like a religion, then it is a religion.
I think it can be considered valid medical treatment in the psychological sense. But I do agree that there is a clear religious theme in AA. Others have made this point as well. There are alternative programs that follow AA’s abstinence program but do not use the “spirtual” aspects.
The difference is that religions ascribe omnipotent power to the “God”. The higher power concept of AA does not require you to believe in an all powerful being, only something which is a higher power than yourself, even if only marginally so.
I don’t think so. There is no creed to which you must subscribe. “Carrying this message” means spreading the word that you can stop drinking. The only requirement for membership in AA is a desire to stop drinking. You don’t have to stop, you just have to want to stop.
Are there those who think you must turn your life over to a “higher power?” Absolutely, but are you excommunicated if you don’t. No you aren’t and I can attest to that on the basis of personal experience.
If you don’t like the idea of a “higher power” don’t go to AA. If you aren’t an alcoholic I’m not sure what difference it makes to you how AA functions. If you are and are put off by the “higher power” aspect to the point you don’t attend meetings you are only denying yourself a possible way out.
In short, why are you bothering to piss into the wind?
They hold to tenets which no member, visitor, etc, is allowed to question, including not only the essential role of Higher Power but also the mantra-like highly inflexible use of certain phrases from the Big Book.
They have no more room in their congregation for a person who says “I can drink without it being a problem if I can keep from doing a real bender, that’s my goal, to be a social drinker and drink only in moderaton” than the local fundamentalist Christian Church has for a person who says “I really admire the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, I don’t really hold to any of this ‘Son of God’, ‘Died for our sins’ stuff but I want to live in accordance with the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount & Sermon on the Plains”.
You must believe the Gospel and quit fighting The Truth or you aren’t welcome to come in and play.
I don’t have your experience, having been to only two AA meetings, but at both of those something very much like a confession of faith was recited, including a bit about coming to insight that we couldn’t handle our problems themselves and had to turn to a higher power.
To me, this sentence pretty much means “AA is a religion”.
Well, of course not. That’s like saying a political party is a religion because they have no room for people who don’t share their political views. AA is about stopping drinking completely. That’s not what makes it a religion.
Since I was one of the ones bringing it up in the other thread, I’ll take that one, Alex.
I’m not “pissing into the wind”, I’m trying to understand. Y’know, fighting my own ignorance and all. I hear “higher power” or “power greater than themselves”, and I think “God” or “gods and goddesses” or “avatars” or “ascended masters” - all things which are spiritual or religious in nature. But I’m a theist, it’s how my mind works. I’m trying to understand how the atheist AAer’s mind works.
I guess I’m still not clear. Yeah, I could admit that the IRS (or gravity, as offered in the other thread) is more powerful than I am. So what? How does the IRS help me stop drinking? Is it a simple lesson in humility? “I am not the most powerful thing, therefore I may not have power over alcohol?” I’d get that, but that’s making alcohol the higher power, and that doesn’t seem to be what they’re doing. Is it accountability, as the higher power must be reported to and will hold you responsible? In that case, will my mom work if I call her when I take a drink? Is it affirmation, like the K-mart sign story in the other thread? Just a daily reminder? If so, how is that “higher” or “greater” than me? Or is it a “lend me your strength in my moment of weakness” deity kind of thing, which is how I’ve always understood it. Any deity of your choice, of course, but deity nonetheless.
We can wrassle with the question of whether belief in a deity = religion, or if you need priests and churches and holy books and creation myths, I suppose, but what I was first asking is simple: What is this “higher power” if not a god? I grok that it’s not the same for everyone, and I’m cool with that (hell, I’m a neopagan. I enjoy six different gods with this complete breakfast!), I just don’t understand what “a greater power” is to an atheist.
I’m not asking for a thesis. Some more examples might make it clearer.
What is meant by “higher?” What is an example of a “higher power” which is not supernatural. What other aspect of medicine considers appeals to the supernatural to be a valid form of treatment for a disease. Even if you say the HP doesn’t have to be supernatural, AA still says it CAN be and that amounts to an endorsement of faith healing as far as I can see.
One of the steps of AA includes “admitting to a higher power” that you are powerless over alcohol. What power should an atheist be admitting that to? Am I supposed to admit it to “Gravity” or “The Government?” Seriously, what does that mean if it isn’t religious?
Higher power is clear and obvious. No mistake it is a religious organization. Arguing that it could mean anything is disingenuous. We know what they man.
“Higher Power” can vary from situation to situation. I have pointed out to people facing warants that currently the court & police were a “power greater than themselves”. A court-ordered drug counseling program is a higher power. The AA group can be a higher power. The company I work for is a higher power. It is up to me to choose to take the advice of the "higher power"s that will help to restore me to sanity.
The first step says “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol & that our lives were unmanageable.”
If this doesn’t describe you, then you don’t need AA. If this statement has never described you, then you lack the background to understand why a person would seek the help of a 12 step program or why it makes sense to call addiction a “disease”.
The second step say “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”. The third step says “We made a decision to turn our will & our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him”.
AA & other 12 step programs vary from locale to locale & group to group. Some groups welcome Atheists & Agnostics, some don’t. Some groups & individual members scoff at AA members having some other understanding of God than a guy who looks like Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Santa Claus or Charles Darwin while others dismiss the egotism & childishness of believing that God has a human form. Some AA members “use the force, Luke”. Some see Science & the human capacity to learn as a higher power.
AA is not a cult, there is no charismatic leader, there is no requirement that you abandon any other religious affiliation, and many don’t.
the concept of a higher power is left vague because there is no right answer. the only measure of success is staying sober, if you’re doing that no one will tell you you’re doing it wrong.
for example, if you look to a group of 20 or 30 people with long term sobriety as more powerful than yourself who cannot stay sober alone than that’s enough.
If you go no farther than that, and stay sober, no one will tell you you’re doing it wrong. True if your struggling people will suggest spiritual practices that they feel helped them.
i’ve know surfers who said they’d been rolled by the ocean enough to see it as a power greater than themselves.
the points of dissimillarity to religion are often overlooked in these discussions, no leader, no saviour, no one true faith, no rejection of other faiths or churches, the book specifically states we know only a little.
The one point where you might have a point (forgive the repetition) is the lack of rejection of other faiths. The other things are either not requirements of religion or present in AA; I’m thinking specifically of “one true faith”.
AA very much does have a true faith. It has sacraments. It has sacred texts. Groups recite ritually from these texts. The notion that AA is the one golden way to sobriety is taken as gospel within the organization. There is an outspoken feeling of “us and them”, in the litany about people who came to AA and then kept drinking, how that is a congenial flaw in such people and that they are to be pitied.
There seems to be a certain amount of defensiveness in this thread, so let me just say that I have absolutely nothing against AA. Nothing at all. But if I see a spade lying in my yard, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna call it a rake.