Taking the fight to the real issue

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Because you choose to not drink since it is a better option for you? I'm assuming you're bringing up the drink because you've previously had problems with alcohol.

Well, the issue is that leejosepho is a former alcoholic who got reformed through AA meetings. AA meetings usually invoke god as the being to save them from their alcoholism. So, the problem is that leejosepho cannot see how AA meetings could work without god.

I've known several recovering alcoholics who have said their sole purpose for believing in God is their sobriety. You must subscribe to God, or a "higher power," in order to join. It's a prerequisite. Of course this is the same program that considers alcoholism a disease that one can never be recovered from. Cancer is a disease. Alcoholism, meh. That's not to say the the program hasn't worked wonderfully for countless people. In that respect, I see AA as a good thing, but they do have some questionable cult-like practices, not unlike religion.

That is true in a casual way, but such a perception of what actually happened and how is far from complete. In the face of my own powerlessness to manage my own life in any way so I would no longer have to drink, I followed a specific program of action for the expressed purpose of complete abandonment of my will and my life (management) to the One who created us.


First, because I followed (and still follow) the dictates of no man or woman, and second, because no one has since shown me where there were any.


My asking why I no longer have to drink is a rhetorical question -- I already know the answer. But anyone who wants me to agree or believe there is no "God" or supernatural or whatever and/or to stop talking about that is going to have to come up with some kind of better explanation.


... an irrelevant, out-of-context, rhetorical argument meant to confuse the issue at hand.

Completely serious. Apart from "God", I would either still be drinking or dead today.

The rate of success for AA and other methods that do not invoke a higher being are the same: 50% (give or take statistical anomalies along the way). It's more a matter of the individual in question than the program used.

obviously, statistics that don't fit with the religious worldview are, like fossils, easily explained by the "satan is a dick and the atheists are in on it" theory. (2 john 1:7 "Teh meanies nots liking Jebus is everywheres! Dey is being not goodz." -lolcatbible.com)

And of course, this kind of program could have significant psychological consequences, regardless of whether a deity exists or not. The fact that it was discovered as effective could actually be a sign of a systemized method of creating psychological responses, as after all, miracles do not need human systems to occur.


Well, the issue is that the entirety of the behavior you were engaging in would actually be very likely to have significant psychological impact. How do you separate your actions and their effects from the actual miracle? How do you distinguish between your actions and miraculous actions, while engaging in this program?


1) It is not necessary. Claiming this is to say that a theory of reality has to address every aberration, and in general this is not required. Aberrations exist, they are often explained away later.
2) You followed a program designed to arrive at a certain outcome to a certain means. I mean.... basically you were brainwashed. The ability of these efforts to go very far is relatively well-known. So, to say that your outcome is just an extreme result of that kind of brainwashing program is not so strange for anybody to uphold. I mean, there are many of the "true converts" who go around and change their lives later disavowing such things as a sign of God, and even of people who have something like the "true conversion" for non-religious reasons. So... I don't see why this should be taken seriously.


No it isn't.
1) You already admitted that your argument was rhetoric.
2) The issue is explanation, right? So, there are two ways to handle the issue of explanation: the first is proposing and advancing an idea, and the second is attacking other explanations based upon their flaws. All of these issues are flaws in your explanation.

I can see how one could label alcoholism a disease.

However, I also think that the very practices of AA are in some sense parallel to those cults, and that parallel suggests psychological manipulation. Not necessarily of an evil sort, but of the sort that can significantly alter behavior.

And here's your answer leejosepho. The program manipulated your feelings to use theistic notions to alter your behavior. It didn't need God though, because other similar programs have the same success rate. If God were necessary, then only theistic programs would work.

And doing further research, the success rates are lower than that. 50% is more of an initial success, not long term.

One's faith in god is nice but it's roughly equivalent to one's faith in themselves. The more consistent faith you have in yourself (god), the more likely you are to succeed in such an endeavor as quitting a serious alcohol problem.

Really, when you think about the underlying mechanics, it almost reminds me of LaVeyan Satanism except the superego is externalized instead of acknowledged as a part of one's self.

Here is a fairly comprehensive statement from "Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, pages 84-85:

"... we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition."

Or from page 57:

"In this book you will read the experience of a man who thought he was an atheist ...
"This man recounts that he tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love. He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator.
"Thus was our friend's cornerstone fixed in place. No later vicissitude has shaken it. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night, years ago, it disappeared. Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink even if he would. God had restored his sanity." (emphasis added)

Apart from that, I am quite sure I would have been dead long ago ... and whenever I hear anyone say there is no "God", I just ask them to try to offer some better explanation for why I no longer have to drink.

REMINDER: Testimonials are not evidence.

Well, they are, but of a rather questionable sort.

As it stands, I don't see why desires for something couldn't be entirely suppressed, particularly by an ideology that emphasizes the suppression of those particular desires.

It really depends on what it is. An atheist delivering a testimonial for god is not any kind of direct evidence.

Good luck on finding an answer for this.

My take on the argument: you can hold up the idea of an all knowing, all powerful, and all loving God against 'this' and either deny his existence because of 'this' just as easily as you assume that God and reverse engineer an equally compelling answer on why he/she/it would have created 'this' and still be all knowing/all powerful/all loving.

I mean that in all of its profundity. Evolution, big bang, coherence of science, a 'magic'-dry world, disintegration of organized religion, 'God of the gaps', concerns over whether religious ideas have any place in law, human rights, profound suffering for likely billions of years, the history of religion, its own evolution and what it means, etc. etc.. It might mean no God exists, it might mean that God is getting exactly what he/she/it intended because, as an all knowing and all powerful being, there's no other way about it.