Alcoholics Anonymous and belief in God

[Loffler]

You're links, as I've already pointed out a few times, were about optimism not helping cancer and statistics about AA. They were IRRELEVANT within the context of what was being argued. I had already pointed out that optimism is not a cure-all, and I never once argued about AA AT ALL.

Does the phrase "Alcoholics Anonymous and belief in God" sound familiar to you? It should, it's the thread title. If you don't think my link about AA is relevant you're not participating in the thread anyway and it's your points that are irrelevant.

the things I was saying about optimism being a contributor to good health, exercise, etc were not breakthrough or hard to find things; ANYONE who stays even remtoely informed and up to date about science knows about these things.

Which is why I'm informed about that. Which is why I'm not arguing against that. It's weird that you think I am. Pay closer attention.

[VanReal]

Furthermore, if it truly is "different for everyone," then many people would be using the wrong method for themselves and not realize it: someone who could recover with a little help from exercise or church but not playing guitar wouldn't experience the same recovery if they picked the wrong recovery method for themselves. If everyone has different "right" recovery aids, everyone also has different wrong recovery aids.

Finally, something we can agree on.  That is correct.  Recovery doesn't work at the same speed or pace for everyone, and many people don't recover the first time.  They try several times and several different aids until something works for them, and some never do, and some get it right the first time.

[Loffler]

Sure, i'd lighten up, I'm not really "angry" anyway, but you seem like the type of person who would just try to take advantage of others' while their guards are down.

You strike me as the kind of person who piles on the paragraphs hoping one of them eventually makes sense.

[Loffler]

Finally, something we can agree on. That is correct. Recovery doesn't work at the same speed or pace for everyone, and many people don't recover the first time. They try several times and several different aids until something works for them, and some never do, and some get it right the first time.

And some aids people think are helping are not actually helping at all.

[VanReal]

Sure, i'd lighten up, I'm not really "angry" anyway, but you seem like the type of person who would just try to take advantage of others' while their guards are down.

You strike me as the kind of person who piles on the paragraphs hoping one of them eventually makes sense.

Hmm, that's because Miss Anthrope does not try to make us better develop our powers of telepathy in order to communicate effectively with a person who talks down to people throughout every post and then whines when someone calls him on it.

Your original statement had nothing to do with statistics, at least what was posted did not, can't speak for the voices in your head not making it onto computer screen.

[VanReal]

Finally, something we can agree on. That is correct. Recovery doesn't work at the same speed or pace for everyone, and many people don't recover the first time. They try several times and several different aids until something works for them, and some never do, and some get it right the first time.

And some aids people think are helping are not actually helping at all.

And that is determined by????  

[Loffler]

Do you understand that this was not a statistics based argument at ANY point?

That would be peculiar, considering my original statement you took issue with was statistics-based.

Something you didn't make clear until quite aways into the argument, and a perspective I was clearly not arguing from. So you really are just trying to screw with people.

"Religion doesn't help recovery" is no different than the statement "There is no God." Both are heavy with hidden parentheticals, but both are also correct on their own.

The expanded version of the latter would be "[In accordance with the current inductive record of reality and the laws of physics and cosmology derived thereof]There [probably] is no God [meaning, at minimum, an intelligent source of the universe][yet]."

I'm sure there are plenty of Asperger types who can't resist typing out the long version every time. I'm not one of them. I like brevity. There is no God. And religion doesn't help [because it can't yet be demonstrated to improve odds and rate of recovery beyond random chance, according to the data of which I'm currently aware].

[Miss Anthrope]

You're links, as I've already pointed out a few times, were about optimism not helping cancer and statistics about AA. They were IRRELEVANT within the context of what was being argued. I had already pointed out that optimism is not a cure-all, and I never once argued about AA AT ALL.

Does the phrase "Alcoholics Anonymous and belief in God" sound familiar to you? It should, it's the thread title. If you don't think my link about AA is relevant you're not participating in the thread anyway and it's your points that are irrelevant.

the things I was saying about optimism being a contributor to good health, exercise, etc were not breakthrough or hard to find things; ANYONE who stays even remtoely informed and up to date about science knows about these things.

Which is why I'm informed about that. Which is why I'm not arguing against that. It's weird that you think I am. Pay closer attention.

Again, you're screwing around. You became engaged in an argument that deviated from the AA topic for the [past few pages, and you're just NOW starting to play the "I've been on topic" card. Please. Sure, your link WAS relevant to the theme of the thread, but you were linking in response to MY arguments, which had nothing to do with AA.

"Pay closer attention". You say this a lot. Yes, in the past few posts you've been admitting to the optimism/health benfits thing (wait so you know this, but optimsim doesn't help sick people???), but early on you needed links to such information.

Hence, I maintain that you are screwing around.

I'll be avoiding you from now on.

[Loffler]

Finally, something we can agree on. That is correct. Recovery doesn't work at the same speed or pace for everyone, and many people don't recover the first time. They try several times and several different aids until something works for them, and some never do, and some get it right the first time.

And some aids people think are helping are not actually helping at all.

And that is determined by????  

The similarity of a success rate to that of random chance.

[VanReal]

The similarity of a success rate to that of random chance.

I could appreciate, and possibly even buy into that argument if we were talking about diabetes and what works to control high blood sugar, but not when talking about addictive behavior, there is no measure for random chance in behavior modification.  Ever seen Clockwork Orange?

[Loffler]

The similarity of a success rate to that of random chance.

I could appreciate, and possibly even buy into that argument if we were talking about diabetes and what works to control high blood sugar, but not when talking about addictive behavior, there is no measure for random chance in behavior modification.  Ever seen Clockwork Orange?

Yeah I don't get how it demonstrates that point.

[VanReal]

The similarity of a success rate to that of random chance.

I could appreciate, and possibly even buy into that argument if we were talking about diabetes and what works to control high blood sugar, but not when talking about addictive behavior, there is no measure for random chance in behavior modification.  Ever seen Clockwork Orange?

Yeah I don't get how it demonstrates that point.

Um, did you pay attention to the movie?  Even in a restrained and controlled environment behavior modification is not absolute, or measurable from outside, it all takes place within where your science and statistics can't go.

[Loffler]

Ok that puts us in an even more agnostic position, doesn't it? That would mean we can't even honor the statistics if we DO find them. Where do we go from there?

[VanReal]

Ok that puts us in an even more agnostic position, doesn't it? That would mean we can't even honor the statistics if we DO find them. Where do we go from there?

That's a good question.  I guess we just hope that those in the psychiatric and behavioral science arenas keep working at us and come up with something that affects a more broad range of people.  Until then we repeat attempts and failure towards mental health and destructive behavior.  Subjective issues are always difficult to put in a box, that may be what makes them interesting.

[Ihateyoumike]

Believing in god is all about  believing a power which we need in order to help succeed and to back us in failure and hence i too believe in god.
----
sathyan

Alcoholism Information

Believing in God does not help with recovery. At all.

I don't think we should presume to know what helps people through recovery or any trying time in their lives.  Each person gets through things in their own way.  Let's not pretend to know what works for everyone, we need to make sure we aren't saying the same thing to the religious that we don't want them saying to us.

I was going back reading through this thread to see when it started to go a bit off track from a discussion into a more argumentative phase. I also wanted to see if I was correct in thinking that the times I've been mentioned in this thread were actually based on posts in another thread. I got to the above string of posts and they got me thinking.

What if I substitute another word for "god" in the first post? Something like "family"? It would read like this:
"Believing in [family] is all about  believing a power which we need in order to help succeed and to back us in failure and hence i too believe in [family]."

Nothing wrong with that. Looks pretty good to me. But what would the response look like?
"Believing in [family] does not help with recovery. At all."

A little presumptuous? Completely without merit?  Definitely looks a little bit more harsh when family is put in there.

What's my point? I think some people saw that god could easily be substituted in that sentence with many other words, and although it was not in direct context to the thread (AA & belief in god), it would be a correct statement. Others cannot look past the fact that "god" is the word in that statement, and took offense to the statement because of that. Being an atheist, I have a hard time looking past god in that statement as well. I think belief in god is ridiculous, like others here. What I do not believe is that someone having a belief in a god, and the human support system that usually comes with that,  is always detrimental to that person as an individual. I think that some people who are atheist do believe that. I think they cannot look past the fact that they know there is no god, and because of that, any claims to someone's faith being a positive are taken as being completely false to these people, and are attacked.
I think the notion of god is ridiculous, but I don't feel that faith in a god, and religion are always a bad thing for individuals. Which is why I think the reply to both of the above posts was so appropriate and summarizes my own thoughts very well:

"I don't think we should presume to know what helps people through recovery or any trying time in their lives.  Each person gets through things in their own way.  Let's not pretend to know what works for everyone, we need to make sure we aren't saying the same thing to the religious that we don't want them saying to us."

That all being said, I would like religion to go the way of the dinosaurs. I simply have respect (at least outwardly) for other people's beliefs as long as they are not trying to force their beliefs upon me.