The hell it is! My great-aunt has been a member of AA for years, as well as doing counseling for Al-Anon and Al-ATeen.
They do NOT say if you don’t believe in God you won’t get sober. It’s NOT about faith healing, but about extreme discipline. It seems to be a way of life-of changing one’s OUT LOOK on life.
:rolleyes:
To add another layer onto this topic…There was once an motorcycle accident where the biker veered off the road and crashed into the side of the road. The man fell on the pavement with the bike crushing over his foot. The Christian of this story went up to him and asked “Are you all right?”
The men was in extreme pain, he was blooding, a bike was resting on his feet. In retrorespective, that was the stuipdest thing I ever said…
(oops…)
My mind must have been switched off while typing…
It shall be “the man was in extreme pain, he was bleeding**…**”
Guess this is the second stuipdest thing I ever know a Christian (me) said!
That was stupid. Everyone knows 3rd edition rules are much better.
In her defense, this was in the early nineties. And she wasn’t a precognitive: she was an empath.
(Or so she told us. One of the most hilariously painful things i ever saw was her sleazing on a male friend of mine, and when he’d say, “Get! off! me! NOW!”, she’d giggle and say, “I know you like it, I’m an empath, and I can tell,” and he’d say, “Eww! No I don’t! Get away from me!” and we’d nearly pee ourselves laughing at the horror)
Daniel
laughs That’s a good one, Daniel! I’ve got sort of the reverse of that to offer.
When I was in 6th Grade, I was big into Dungeons and Dragons. David, one of my best friends at the time, also liked it. One time, when I had been invited over to his house for the weekend, I brought my D&D set (complete with a new campaign I had just finished) with me.
Ooops.
Turns out, David hadn’t told his mom that he was into D&D. It also turned out that his mom was devoutly Christian, and vehemently opposed to Dungoens & Dragons in principle.
Sooo… I got quite the lecture about my little “problem,” and then I got sent home. But not before this gem, which is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard anyone say, whether Christian or not. She informed me of the little-know fact that:
"If you break a Dungeons and Dragons gameboard over your knee, it will scream!"
I didn’t bother pointing out that D&D doesn’t have a gameboard. I did feel bad for David, though… I’m sure he got it much worse than I did.
By the way, dil, your assertion has already been proven false. Repeated assertions of the same thing mean little. inertia has kindly provided a link to the religioustolerance.org website (an excellent source), I recommend you read it. Unless you have something which disproves it, its probably best just to step off that particular point now. Thanks.
Repeat after me, Avalonian: “I don’t want to be Elfstar; I want to be Debbie!”…
chortle But I don’t want to be Debbie either! 
It’s been such a long time since I played, I think I’ve forgetten how. I’ll have to break out the board and see if I still remember how to worship Satan.
That’s a wonderful quote. Thank you.
Wow, as one of the resident religious freakos around here, I’m actually encouraged by the responses in general in this thread.
I could certainly contribute some things I’ve heard Christians say (I’m sure I’ve been around them much more than most of you), but anyone with belief system is vulnerable to not looking at the other side. I’d be the first to admit that there are some people in the church for whom real deep thought is a rare exercise.
“Jesus saves, mainly by using half off coupons and buying bulk.”
^
What an idiot.
I had a debate once with a Baptist about evolution and religion in general. He basically said that you can’t read the whole Bible and then not believe.
Regarding AA, it’s not a cut and dry question, as the organization is diverse, and deliberately vague. But there is no doubt that AA is a religious organization, and that it’s programs do push a particular view, regardless of how vague, on desperate people.
So while non-believers can certainly prosper with AA, it’s only by ignoring or heavily re-interpreting many of the traditions, practices, and writings from the founders. There is a great deal of condescension towards non-believers out there among AA proponents (especially the more dogmatic ones).
For instance, the Big Book is not exactly nice or tolerant when it comes to atheists, agnostics, or skeptics. It has an entire chapter (“We Agnostics”) that, whether intentional or not, basically insults and demeans its subjects. In fact, it basically threatens death if you don’t accept it’s idea of spiritual experience.
Some exerpts
“To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster … To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.” (p. 44)
“But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life – or else. Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But cheer up, something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics.” (p. 44)
“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.” (p. 181)
Frankly, I’m not too concerned about all of this though. If there is a spiritual-based program that helps people give up drinking, that’s GREAT. If it has to insult non-believers: well, we’re used to it, and most of us can cope.
My real problem with AA is 1) that state courts have often treated it as if it were appropriate place to order non-believing alcoholoics without giving them any non-religious options (thus taking advantage of people at their lowest), and AA tolerates this 2) that its recovery philosophy, which is very shakily supported, is widely assumed to be true, and has come to dominate most recovery efforts despite a very low rate of success compared to other movements, crowding out other promising approaches.
AA’s concept of powerlessness works for some people. But for many other people, it seems to be highly counter-productive, virtually promising a relapse. If you think about how people have different personality types, that different approaches work for different people isn’t that surprising. But AA’s approach, as I said, has crowded out all others to the point where many people, including medical professionals, simply have never heard of anything else. People like Stanton Peele have raised seriosu issues about the scientific validity of many of the claims and dogma sayings of AA.
—They do NOT say if you don’t believe in God you won’t get sober.—
Depends on who “they” are. As I noted, what Bill says, at least, is basically, if you don’t “live on a spiritual basis” you will not only not get sober, you will die. That’s not quite the same thing, but it’s not exactly much better.
However, Bill isn’t AA anymore, and the Big Book and other such traditions and dogmas are not necessarily central to many or even most groups. The steps don’t necessarily HAVE to mention God (though most do) or include secretarian religious prayers (though many groups still do).
In general, maybe. But it is the opinion of many *D&D players that the 3rd Edition’s Psionics Handbook is a disappointment. Unlike the psionicist character class in 2nd Edition AD&D, the 3rd Edition “psion” class isn’t much different from the sorcerer class in the main 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook. There’s hardly a reason to use psionics at all. (And the “psionic items” in 3rd Edition are just the 3rd Edition magic items with different names. Bleah.)
Im about to start some new topics…
Stupidest thing you heard a black man say…
Stupidest thing you heard a woman say…
Stupidest thing you heard a homosexual say…
I don’t understand what all the complaints are about concerning framing the question in Christian terms. He was watching a Chritian television channel and watching a Christian person use an absurdity to demonstrate that Jesus is presumably all powerful. WHy on earth would anyone open a thread entitle “stupidest things a homosexual ever said,” or “…an athiest said” with a story entirely related to fundi Christian ignorance?
“Jesus was the greatest American ever.”
Ok, well on Cheaters, lets say it was yesterday i saw this man cheating on his wife.
They had footage of him doing it.
He said he didnt do it.
That is the STUPIDEST thing a black person has ever said.
That black man is the stupidest black man on earth!
Wow! Who woulda thunk that every time I ever jerked off God was thinking about pussy, too!
After losing twin 1, then my father 2 weeks later, then the second twin 2 weeks later my boss asked if she could pray for me as she was a strong Christian and believed she and her prayer group could do me some good.
Told her it was her perogative, then mentioned that I was Buddhist.
Without a pause she looked me straight in the eye and told me that all that all my losses were the result of my “worshipping the wrong god.”
Completely dumbstruck there was nothing I could say. Just looked at her in amazement.
She didn’t blink an eye. No apology. Nothing.
This doesn’t mean all Christians are evil and deserve to be strung up by their tongues then lashed.
Far from it.
It taught me to be more careful about divulging personal information.
It taught me that even Christians can be cruel.
It showed me I have great constraint because I really wanted to throttle her for using such simple words to break my heart and create doubt.