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I think there's a major understanding of this part of AA. This DOES NOT mean acknowledging that you believe there is a god. The concept of a "higher power" can mean anything you want it to mean. You can imagine your higher power is Gandalf, Sauron, elves at the bottom of the garden, or even some aspect of your "best self." You could imagine it to be the spirits of your ancestors or even something like the energy of the universe.

The point is surrendering to something "bigger" than yourself. Don't get tied up in militant atheist perspectives.

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I think this depends on your specific AA. In bigger cities this is largely indeed the case. However, in smaller towns it’s not as true.

That being said, these smaller towns already pressure people to believe in a higher power in most social settings, so it’s less a case of AA imposing it and more society, which is kind of to be expected in a people driven effort.

I suspect that's a YMMV scenario that may differ enormously from AA group to AA group.

My son's in Cub Scouts and we take this approach with the "duty to God" requirements (he doesn't have a duty to God, so duty fulfilled!) but some troops require a bit more than that.

Please describe a 'militant' atheist perspective unironically. :)

When you contrast it to any other type of 'militant', there is typically violence involved..

However, personally, I think the closest thing I could believe in is a "best self". Not that anyone chooses their beliefs, but the rest would be pretty hard to digest for any good reasons.

Honestly, I just think giving up on the idea that you can do this by yourself (in the long term) is counter-productive. Especially if you have an existential crisis later in life and that 'higher power' was the only thing that kept you moving forward. Learning how to embrace self-respect/love/understanding/esteem would go so much further in the long run and would help in all aspects of your life. With each success, and learning to accept each failure -- you will be strengthening productive habits.

> Please describe a 'militant' atheist perspective unironically. :)

I think of militant as unyielding and confrontational. This isn't some pejorative assigned to others, it is a term forwarded and embraced by proponents of that ideology. For an unironic perspective I suggest this New Yorker article "All Scientists Should be Militant Atheists" by Lawrence Krauss [1].

1. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/all-scientists-shou...

The first usage of militant atheist out there is in quotes.

Which clearly indicates that the author doesn’t actually believe that’s an appropriate term, but is rather saying that if what is described by some as militant atheism (an adjective the author doesn’t agree with, hence the quotes) then all scientists should be atheistic enough to be described as militant by those people.

Well... I did met violent militant atheists, so they DO exist.

Thankfully that was many, many years ago, but stuff that happened to me:

1. Atheist stealing my bible then proceeding to play "soccer" using it as ball.

2. And Atheist + Vegan being physically threatening because I was eating meat and was christian.

3. I got hit on the back of my head with a chain, in middle of a university class, completely out of the blue, some time after an atheist classmate found out I was christian (he waited until I was busy reading something to attack me).

4. Had a group of atheists constantly bully me (for example stealing stuff, damaging my property, graffiti, etc...)

All of that happened near "highly educated" people, for example inside school, academia, white-collar workplaces...

After I started to interact with "normal" people (the average person of my country, that doesn't have college education, have blue collar work, or work in service industry directly in contact with people, etc...) this all stopped.

If you wanna trade stories I can tell you about growing up atheist in South Carolina, but I don't think it's a productive or effective use of this forum.

I usually, don't talk about these situations, was only replying to the guy directly above me, that DID asked for that.

In my country the population is mostly followers of african religions, although they don't know that (they all claim to be catholics, but don't go to mass, but often go to african-based holidays, festivals, etc... and often believe in african supersticions), atheists are a tiny minority, but they are important, "elite" places, like Academia, politics, mainstream media and so on, have lots of them, and many are blatantly militant, although I cited some anecdotes, during cold war we had atheist guerrilas and violence that needed to be handled by the army (that in turn commited their own atrocities).

I wish people believed more in certain freedoms, for example atheists I know often interpret separation of church and state to mean "freedom from religion", instead of "freedom of religion", but "freedom of religion" should also mean freedom to not believe in anything at all.

Also I wish people would stop conflating some things, for example many atheists I know are biologists (there is a important state-backed biology course in my metro area, often students are sent to MIT, Harvard, etc... in exchange programs), and many believe that biologists that have a religion are evil people that believe in fantasies... meanwhile had leadership in some churches I visited insist that science is evil because evolution and whatnot is not in the bible.

I believe this is part of why we ended in the situation we are discussing on this thread: many atheists intentionally want to dismantle all forms of belief on higher powers, no matter what kind of powers they are, because they conflate being religious with evil.

> Don't get tied up in militant atheist perspectives.

Not that you're saying its not, but I'd grasp onto this to add a point that its valid and useful to debate whether that surrendering is the best path.

In my mind, what you're being asked to do is abstract and make a virtual externalization of your ego. The benefit is you can get some of the benefits of ego-depletion or ego-loss, but the side effect is that it risks further use of that mechanism to explain or stop caring about things that are more easily under one's control. This can lead to a cycle of ignorance - if every event that happens is "God's Plan", then why not give into nihilism? Its ends up being the answer to every question - if you don't understand something, then its not due to lack of effort, it must be ungodly.

Note that plenty of religious people don't fall into this trap. They don't have a problem expanding their knowledge, and they leave the dieties in the periphery of understanding. Growing up amongst some extreme fundamentalist people though and seeing the downsides of dealing with all problems through faith alone, I am really lax to recommend the surrendering that AA espouses as a universal/sole truth.

all that and you entirely missed the point. surrender as a broad concept is necessary because alcoholism is an illogical, slippery disease. to get sober, you have to accept that you cannot do something that it seems like everyone else can

Or.... get some distance from the problem, then work on addressing the underlying reasons you go to it, while practicing not doing it. There are many paths.

If it can be anything, including imaginary things, then what's the point?

> You can imagine your higher power is Gandalf, Sauron, elves at the bottom of the garden

That's quite cheeky.

Telling people to believe in a "higher power" simply translates into the gods in the mainstream religion in the society they live in.

I mean, if we're talking about people who actually do imagine that their higher power is Gandalf, then we're talking about some pretty cheeky people here.

Huh? I’ve known plenty of AA members who found the program very helpful and didn’t believe in anything even resembling a mainstream deity.

There are people who have gotten “Jedi” on the official lists of religion. I would presume that one of them going through AA would simply surrender to the Force. Seriously or ha-ha-only-seriously, it doesn’t matter.

Sure, you can surrender to the top name of whatever religion dominates your surroundings. Or you can surrender to the top name of the one your parents raised you in counter to the surroundings, or the top name of the one you found yourself drawn to as you grown up.

Or you could surrender to the Invisible Pink Unicorn, blessed be Her invisible mane. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or anything else made up to mock the idea of religion. I wouldn’t recommend surrendering to Cthulhu for healing via the AA but if you think that sounds like a good idea then go for it.

Whichever deity works. If all you know is the default for your culture and you’re not down with that one, then it’s time to do some research.

I'm with you - whenever a non-demoninational event goes down, or when someone says "take the higher power of your choice, could be Gandalf, it doesn't matter!" I can't help roll my eyes. It's an ignorant thing to say. Assuming a religion is "invalid" or not a "religion" if it doesn't have a godhead at all. Many don't, named or otherwise. "Higher Power." And lord forbid your chosen godhead is someone else's religion fallman. When I was growing up in SC and we'd do these school classroom prayers (public school, unconstitutional, but who's keeping score?), me being a cringy little 13 year old atheist would say shit like "hail satan" and raise ire of pretty much the entire school. So no, they don't really mean "your higher power of choice," they mean "your given godhead that I can convince myself is actually mine just under a different name."

>The point is surrendering to something "bigger" than yourself. Don't get tied up in militant atheist perspectives.

There are people that can just say "from tomorrow I will believe in God/afterlife/spirits etc. It would be so easy to live knowing that your loved ones are not gone or that if you are good enough your problems will be solved soon but for some people(like me) it is like trying to convince me that 2+2=5 and giving cancer to children has a higher purpose that we are to stupid to understand but we still should worship that "bigger" thing.

Sometimes I think that spirituality is something people either "get" or they don't.

For me, to consider the very fact of existence rather than non-existence, the beauty and order of it, the people around me who have somehow manifested as conscious beings from chaos... (and on and on)...

none of those things require a supreme being or intelligent creator, but the sense of awe after giving sufficient consideration is difficult to differentiate from feeling god.

Carl Sagan and his fans (me among them) understand your sense of awe. I do think it's important not to forget that when you lose religion. I also think it's important, as Sagan probably did, for the secular world--for humanity--to reclaim it as part of being human (whether you call it spiritual or not).

I agree the fact we exist and we can consider our existence is something special but still it won't help me with believing that things will be better tomorrow or that there is an afterlife.

when I was a child I wanted to become a priest, I read all the books and I was a believer, the giant mistake the priests and religion teacher made is to be dogmatic, like to still consider that "creation happened as it is said in Bible, that the world is 5000 years old and avoiding though questions with a story where X did Y and then God done Z. I seen on YT interview with smarter clerics that are not as dogmatic and acknowledged some issues and if my teachers were like that maybe I would have kept my faith.

At least the priest/teachers are paid from taxes to tell our children stories and contradict science /s (this is in Romania btw)

"that the world is 5000 years old"?

Don't blame 'religion' in general for such things when frankly only a tiny group of people actually believe that; mostly American frankly.

And also contemplate that there might be reasons why spiritual affiliations have a tendency towards dogma - it's a powerful social instrument. Almost all groups of every kind are dogmatic, it's what we use to 'fill in the blanks' and for most of illiterate or semi-literate history it was 'good enough'. It can be used for good or evil surely, but it's pragmatic.

Everyone seems to be arguing about religion but not focusing on what aspects of it might relate to the ostensible success of AA.

> but the sense of awe after giving sufficient consideration is difficult to differentiate from feeling god

Do you think that, in a universe with a proven-real, interventionist diety—picture, say, the Architect in the Matrix—that "feeling god" would really be a feeling of awe?

I'd personally expect it to be mostly a feeling of fear, at how insignificant and easy-to-accidentally-kill you are.

Imagine the feeling of being made aware of an entire galaxy, one containing quadrillions of lifeforms, getting sucked into a black hole.

Imagine the feeling of knowing that if you ask a question, a million consciousnesses might be created and then destroyed in order to answer it.

In short, imagine the feeling of someone else having an omnipotent magical genie.

Feeling at one with the flow of the universe is, to me, the exact opposite of "feeling god." It's feeling that we're operating in a system with a static set of rules; a feeling that nobody has the capacity to declare humanity forfeit by fiat (but instead has to "work for it" through regular physics, in a way that we might be able to defend against through other physics); etc. It's a feeling that the universe is a fair game rather than a rigged one, at least on the quantum-chromodynamics level.

Suppose you had brain damage and a doctor prescribed some tongue-twisters for you to recite in order to exercise specific parts of your brain. Would you object based on the semantic content of the tongue-twisters? If one of the tongue-twisters was "Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name", would you object to reciting it because you disagree with what it means? What if clinical trials had found that particular phrase to cause the necessary brain exercise, and no-one had discovered any alternative ways to achieve the same exercise?

And fortunately, you don't have to.

People come to AA when their lives have completely fallen to shit. They need something, even if it's something that they have to completely make up for themselves out of whole cloth. They'll believe it because they need to believe it.

People who can quit cold turkey, or manage their alcohol consumption, should do so. AA is a last resort, when you're so desperate that even an atheist is willing to give up something of themselves in order to stop drinking. For atheists there are ways to make that "higher power" palatable, but it's still going to be horrible.

Most people will never have to do that, and they should happily pass that by. Just be aware that there are people whose lives are that bad that they'll try to force themselves to believe. Even so, many will fail. Addiction is a terrible, awful thing.

This comment is 100% on point.

(In my experience).

As a current and active member of AA, let me re-affirm that this battle over a "higher power" exists inside the rooms of AA just as everyone is arguing about it here. A great many alcoholics let them selves get hung up on the concept of a higher power, or more specifically, the word "God". The word God appears 134 times in the first 164 pages of the Big Book. For many non religious people as well as non Christian people this presents a huge problem; how can we alleviate the burden of alcoholism without believing in God?

Within the 12 steps of AA, Bill W clearly laid out the answer to this very question. Below I've copied over the first 3 steps of AA.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

The gist of step 1 is acceptance. Acceptance that our lives are controlled by alcohol. This one is pretty easy for any true alcoholic to admit.

The gist of step 2 is surrender. Step 2 states, "Came to believe a power greater than our selves could restore us to sanity." Coming to believe in something is not the same as flipping a light switch and a light coming on. Surrender here in step 2 deals with admitting that we need the help of something greater then ourselves to restore us to sanity. That power could be the love of your family, wife/husband, kids, the energy that moves the cosmos, or a fucking Zagnut bar. As long as it is a power greater then self, you're good.

The gist of step 3 is faith. The key to not getting hung up here is the statement "God as we understood him". This ties directly back to "a power greater than ourselves". Seeing how the Big Book was initially written in the 1930's, and Bill W himself was a Christian, the word God appears a lot. Before the first edition was published, there was an internal fight between the founding members and contributors to the Big Book on the wording of step 3 in particular. They made a deliberate decision to say "God as we understood him" to include as many people as possible.

I share this with you all because I have been and always will consider myself a non religious person. I have needed to work on the concept of a higher power time and time again. When I first started attending AA meetings I let the God/higher power thing get in the way of my recovery and relapsed many times. Only once I surrendered to the idea that a power greater than myself could alleviate my suffering, was I able to start the road to content sobriety. I hope this helps clear the air for some of you, and if there is anyone out there suffering from alcohol or drugs please find a local AA or NA meeting raise your hand and ask for help.

> That power could be the love of your family, wife/husband, kids, the energy that moves the cosmos, or a fucking Zagnut bar.

So, either you actually believe that a Zagnut bar is an agent that can help you out of your desparate situation by using its special powers. Or you are intentionally obfuscating the rather obvious fact that indeed, people do not need to surrender to anything or anyone, because obviously it's not the Zagnut bar doing the work, but rather exclusively they themselves.

I'm not an AA person, and frankly, from what I know about it, I find it somewhat off-putting . still, I will try and be charitable here.

I have a hard time going to the gym consistently. I know it's good for me, but I just don't like going very much. so I make plans with other people to go to the gym together. if I flake, often they say something about it the next day, which is annoying but ultimately helpful. acknowledging that I can't (or at least probably won't) go to the gym consistently on my own, I have voluntarily created a system where there is a social cost to not going. I still have to do all the work myself, but the other people help me stay on track.

So, other people are a Zagnut bar?

The point here is that there is no "higher power" involved. It's other people or you yourself, or possibly both, neither of which in any meaningful sense qualifies as a "higher power", and either of which has a completely unambiguous, non-confusing term to refer to it: "Other people" and "yourself". The point is that it is dishonest to then pretend that somehow a Zagnut bar could plausibly be an agent helping you instead of simply saying the obvious: It's most certainly not the Zagnut bar, so what's left is you yourself and/or other people.

tbh I always feel like AA people are shooting themselves in the foot with these silly examples of a "higher power", especially on forums like this one. I doubt anyone earnestly surrenders themselves to a candy bar or fire extinguisher, but I'm certainly not knocking it if it helps someone.

I think the point is that you need some sort of mind hack to escape the paradigm of will vs. desire which has been a losing battle thus far for most addicts. it is ultimately your will that prevails, but you have to trick yourself otherwise for it to work.

> I doubt anyone earnestly surrenders themselves to a candy bar or fire extinguisher, but I'm certainly not knocking it if it helps someone.

No, of course, noone does, that's the point. Possibly, some people somehow think that they do (and even that seems a bit unlikely to me), but it just is a nonsense concept: You can, as a matter of semantics, not surrender to something that doesn't exercise power. You might as well be saying that you need to wash yourself, but you can also do so by looking at a horse. Looking at a horse makes you washed as much as following instructions of a candy bar makes you do anything, for lack of any washing effect in one case, for lack of any instructions in the other.

> I think the point is that you need some sort of mind hack to escape the paradigm of will vs. desire which has been a losing battle thus far for most addicts. it is ultimately your will that prevails, but you have to trick yourself otherwise for it to work.

That might well be the case, yep. And I see two big problems with not clearly stating that that is what's (likely) going on: In more than one place, it seems to cause harrassment of atheists, and I am not so sure it's actually helpful for mental health when people externalize the credit for the work that they have done themselves. And also, even if that's a hack that is needed in the "therapeutic context", a discussion about the scientific evidence of the efficacy certainly is not a place for such intentionally onfuscating language.

missing the point entirely. alcoholism is illogical. alcoholism is not something one can control. surrender is a key part of the program because to get sober the alcoholic must accept that they cannot do something that it seems everyone else can (drink)

But THERE IS NO HIGHER POWER INVOLVED. There just isn't. Even if alcoholism is illogical, there still just isn't.

The point is, you find a power greater than yourself that you can surrender your will to. That "higher power" is different to everybody. A lot of people let them selves get hung up on the higher power bit because they can't abstract the idea of surrendering to a non quantifiable or tangible thing (hence the Zagnut bar for those who can't surrender to the idea of love or the ideas of forces of nature). Believe me, I was one of those people for a long time. But my suffering got so great that I eventually had to admit to myself that I cannot do it on my own and I need to find something I hold sacred and dear. And if a Zagnut bar is that higher power for you...then so be it. It's better to believe a Zagnut bar could restore me to sanity, then to continue to kill myself with alcohol and drugs.

Again, the point is surrender. I am in no way saying the Zagnut bar is doing anything but inspiring hope in the alcoholic. And you are 100% correct that the work comes from inside, not a candy bar. But without the surrender of self-will, nothing else is possible. Steps 1, 2, 3 are saying I am powerless over alcohol, that I cannot stop on my own, and need to have faith in a higher power of my own understanding to make it through this thing alive.

> The point is, you find a power greater than yourself that you can surrender your will to.

So, you think that a candy bar is a power, in any way whatsoever?

> A lot of people let them selves get hung up on the higher power bit because they can't abstract the idea of surrendering to a non quantifiable or tangible thing

Because it's nonsense?

> (hence the Zagnut bar for those who can't surrender to the idea of love or the ideas of forces of nature)

Which makes it only more nonsensical?

> Believe me, I was one of those people for a long time. But my suffering got so great that I eventually had to admit to myself that I cannot do it on my own and I need to find something I hold sacred and dear.

... and then you did it yourself, thus demonstrating that you were simply wrong about not being able to do it yourself.

> It's better to believe a Zagnut bar could restore me to sanity, then to continue to kill myself with alcohol and drugs.

Only if that actually "restores you to sanity". And if it does, it was still you who "restored yourself to sanity".

> Again, the point is surrender. I am in no way saying the Zagnut bar is doing anything but inspiring hope in the alcoholic

Yes, you are. You are saying it's "a higher power". It's not. It's a candy bar. Possibly a candy bar that is inspiring hope in an alcoholic.

> And you are 100% correct that the work comes from inside, not a candy bar.

So, why all this dishonest mumbo-jumbo about a "higher power"? Mind you, this is not a therapeutic setting, this is a discussion about scientific evidence of efficacy.

If you think logic is so powerful, why don't you use it to cure alcoholism instead if spending it in HN comments? :) The use of surrender is to admit you don't know how things work. At least not to the point to actually cure yourself of addiction.

> If you think logic is so powerful, why don't you use it to cure alcoholism instead if spending it in HN comments? :)

Where did I make the claim that logic could be used to cure alcoholism?

> The use of surrender is to admit you don't know how things work. At least not to the point to actually cure yourself of addiction.

Which doesn't make a Zagnut bar an agent that has power, does it?

How do you know?

That must be the cheapest attempt at shifting the burden of proof I've encountered yet.

A sane rational logical person has an addiction. The sane rational logical tools he has do not help him to get rid of it. This means he cannot trust them. There's a flaw somewhere and he doesn't know where. They are not good for any conclusion, including the agency and power of that bar. The best he can do is to drop them and admit he knows nothing. Then there's a chance to learn something new that may help with that addiction.

Which doesn't make a Zagnut bar an agent that has power, does it?

I don't know.

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