Alcoholics Anonymous and belief in God

[VanReal]

Then if I recover from alcoholism the same day a tree falls in my yard, a falling tree helped cure my alcoholism.

If you recover from alcoholism in one day then you were not an alchoholic in the first place.  We are talking about recovery here, a lenghty process of behavioral change.  You minimizing it to the above statement makes me think you are not sure of what recovery consists of.  No one claimed that these people who use faith to get them through events or to reach their long term goal looked up at the sky and said a prayer and "voila" they were cured.  I specifically said using religion as a tool during the recovery process and for maintenance afterward.  The above statement is simplistic and not on point.

[Miss Anthrope]

I didn't say hard or soft science, I just said science. By your logic I could smoke weed and do yoga, and since I calmed down they both calmed me down. You're suggesting it's impossible to separate correlation but not causation, but worse than that you're suggesting correlations should nevertheless be honored as causations.

No, you are not reading and are instead forming an opinion of what I say based on your own argument.  What I am saying is that when you are dealing with a corrective action for a behavior you are trying to stop, that what works for one does not work for every one, but what works for that one person is what works for that one person.  There is no need for scientific proof that it worked, the fact that the behavior has been corrected provides the evidence of what worked for that person.

If Jane is an cocaine addict and she enters recovery using her religion as a tool throughout that recovery and as a tool of maintaining that recovery then her religious tool worked to help her.  There is no need for scientific evidence to determine how she recovered, it's a mental recovery, a corrected behavior that she worked through by using religion.

Likewise, if Jim is a cocaine addict and he enters recovery and uses exercise as his tool throughout that recovery and as a tool of maintaining that recovery then his exercise tool worked to help him.  There is no need for scientific evidence to determine how he recovered, blah, blah, blah, he recovered and he did so by using exercise.

I Paul stops sniffing cocaine simply by sheer willpower then he recovered without the use of an external tool.

You can't say that something doesn't work because there is no science to document why it worked, it worked there's no way to argue that it didn't.

Then if I recover from alcoholism the same day a tree falls in my yard, a falling tree helped cure my alcoholism.

Are you kidding me? You're equating perfectly rational arguments that involve things like excercise and active, applied beliefs, both of which have mountains of sceintific data from psychological and biological perspectives to back them up, with a tree falling in the yard?

After reading that, I'm done arguing with Loffler. You're doing a great job, VanReal, but seriously, nothing you say is going to matter.

[VanReal]

I know Miss - fork me, I'm done.  

[Loffler]

First of all, I want to re-cap my original statement: "People often have to delude themselves in some way to get through difficult times."

And sometimes their delusions hurt them. The burden is on you to prove one happens more than the other.

You completely dismissed this claim, yet everyone I have ever known has exhibited the behavior I described in some form or another.

I don't doubt that for a second. You said you grew up in a church environment, so obviously this will be the case.

I was not specifically talking about religion, only making the connection to argue your hard assertions.

Soft assertions. I'm the only one here appealing to the lack of data.

The obvious: Having an optimistic outlook can help prevent depression, thus boosting the immune system, which leads to better health in general.

Not so obvious. A person with a positive outlook isn't depressed. There's a difference in an "obvious truth" and a "tautology." From personal experience with a real Debbie Downer of an ex-girlfriend, telling her to cheer up only made her worse.

when did I ever claim that telling someone to cheer up would make them feel better? I was merely pointing out that there is a connection between optimism and health, from which we can infer that being optimistic can help people get better physically if for no other reason that it prevents depression, which weakens the immune system.

Link please.

Studies have found that many wealthy, successful people have a bloated sense of their own abilities and intelligence. This self-delusion is a factor in their willingness to take chances.

And a high percentage of lottery winners played the lottery. I'd like to know more about the people who aren't successful. How many of them are delusional about not only their abilities but their success?

Did I say all people with self-delusions become successful?

Did I say you did?

No, I was pointing out another piece of evidence that self-delusion can result in beneficial behavior.

It can also result in a negative outcome, too. There's no end to the list of things something CAN do. I want to know what it can do to a statistically significant degree.

None of these things are black and white, so I'm curious as to why you exhibit a narrow-minded selection bias in favor of certain studies.

If I'm aware of two contradictory studies, I go back to an agnostic square one until further notice. Which is where I am right now. I have no reason to believe optimism helps, so I won't believe it until the data is clearer. Sorta like my God policy.

So, despite mountains of information showing that it's beneficial for one's health in general to be optimistic,

Mountains of information you are somehow unable to link to.

you're waiting for a conclusive statement like:
"Optimism is not beneficial for health nor does it ever aid in recovery." You'll NEVER see it, just as you'll never see "Pessimism will always ruin your health and make you fail at everything."

No, I want to see evidence that optimism helps more than it hurts. Do you understand the difference in that statement and the weaker statement "optimism can help," when doesn't really say anything?

I grew up in the church scene, and I've seen alcoholics turn their lives over to God and quit EVERYTHING, cigarettes included.

That would be a compelling anecdote if you didn't grow up in the church scene.

Oh, I see, just becasue I was forced to go to church as a kid, I'm not capable of looking at these things objectively?

No genius, I mean you're going to see more people helped by God if you're around Christians all day. It's a biased sample.

So, my observations of things that actually happened, things which even as a kid I did not assume were becasue of God, are skewed simply becasue I went to church? You're making a very uninformed assumption about what I believed and how I interpeted my observations.

I don't have to make any assumptions, I can see the flaw in just the data you're giving me.

Even as kid, an unusually introspective one I might add, I made the connection that what those people were doing was akin to how I might substitute another activity for playing videogames if my system stopped working.

That is nothing like religion. Forcing yourself to "believe" something is several tiers under actually believing it.

Exactly, so why doesn't it make sense to you that earnest, deluded belief can be even MORE effective at changing one's behavior and helping them through something? If I actually beleived that God was upset with me and my eternal soul was at risk, or I had a placebo-like firm belief that god was "helping" me, then from my experience it's pretty easy to infer that that would aid my recovery. Factor in that I've seen people do it, and I think it's pretty logical to argue your claim that "Believing in God does not help with recovery. At all." as if its fact.

Sorry, your anecdotal experience isn't enough. It has nothing to do with you: no one's anecdotal experience is enough.

There is a wealth of information out there that supports what I said, from the psychological level to the biological. I'm putting the burden of proof on you to show me that optimism doesn't help with recovery at all.

Next you should make me prove God doesn't exist. I can't do that either, and for the same reason.

There's no evidence to support the existence or non-existence of a deity, only evidence that contradicts ancient claims about god. It's a concept outside of the realm of scientific studies. Again, you made this claim, which I argued against" "Believing in God does not help with recovery. At all." This is something you believe for which there are plenty of studies and evidence to prove wrong. And then you said "I'm sure there are people who wouldn't have made it except for their religious beliefs." I'm abit confused as to how your belief system works; most of what you say seems to favor the belief that optimism/beleif in God is not helpful, so I would like to see something you've read that supports this since you decided to prolong an argument, an argument that I've included readily available, easy to find information for on my side.

I must have missed the links you provided, please point that post out to me.

So, you don't like your hard assertions being argued against, and then you avoid bringing anything to the table to support your claims. This is nothing like asking you to prove that God doesn't exist. I'm simply asking to see information that has resulted in what you believe.

The rest of my response can be summed up as "Link Please." You need to start backing up your statements.

[Loffler]

Then if I recover from alcoholism the same day a tree falls in my yard, a falling tree helped cure my alcoholism.

If you recover from alcoholism in one day then you were not an alchoholic in the first place.  We are talking about recovery here, a lenghty process of behavioral change.

Fine, 100 trees then. Jesus Christ.

You minimizing it to the above statement makes me think you are not sure of what recovery consists of.  No one claimed that these people who use faith to get them through events or to reach their long term goal looked up at the sky and said a prayer and "voila" they were cured.  I specifically said using religion as a tool during the recovery process and for maintenance afterward.  The above statement is simplistic and not on point.

Correlation does not imply causation. I don't know how else to explain this concept to you.

[Loffler]

Are you kidding me? You're equating perfectly rational arguments that involve things like exercise and active, applied beliefs, both of which have mountains of sceintific data from psychological and biological perspectives to back them up, with a tree falling in the yard?

No. If there is scientific data to back it up, I would love to see it. Until then, you're parroting "conventional wisdom" and not providing anything substantial.

In fact, all anyone has done in this thread is try to explain it to me using argumentation, with statements like "C'mon if he prays and recovers then obviously prayer helped!" I'm amazed anyone on this forum would say that, and not because it's prayer. It's a major failure of logic to assume two things occurring at the same time have to be connected just because someone claims they are.

Here's a novel idea: maybe some of the things that people think help them recover DON'T help them. Of course, that would be impossible in VanReal's world, where everything you think helps you does help you.

After reading that, I'm done arguing with Loffler.

Yeah, I could tell from your other post you were done.

I'm open to the possibility that faith helps people recover. I'm a man of science. I change my beliefs with the data. Just send me some convincing links and I'll change my opinion. I do it all the time.

[Loffler]

I know Miss - fork me, I'm done.  

I honestly can't believe what I'm reading on this thread. I didn't know there were atheists who weren't also skeptics.

Everything that someone thinks helped their recovery actually helped their recovery? How can you possibly think like that?

[Miss Anthrope]

Loffler, I am going to reply, although I feel like I'm indulging some strange performance art. I don't feel like taking the time to do quotes, so here you go:

I never ONCE said ANYTHING about whether delusions harm or help more people. Why should the burden be on me to prove something I never even claimed? Do you even know what you're arguing about? Also, it seems that your logic is: If fewer people are helped by delusion/optimism, then it must be a scientific fact that such things do not help with recovery.

You seem fixated on the fact that a good portion of my childhood involved church, but there's much more to it: People going through bad breakups, people dealing  with self-esteem issues, people dealing with addictions. High school alone was like a showcase in delusion. So, no, I'm not simply drawing on experiences from church, I'm drawing from people in general, church was just another place I witnessed such behavior.

What lack of data? Why do I have to link to anything? I already played your game on my Joker thread, sending you the first link that came up when I typed in "joker philosophy" when you didn't believe that there could be people out there who idolized the Joker. Seriously, Google any combo of words like "optimism health depression immune system" etc. The things I said are generally accepted by the scientific community.
I'm not unable to link to anything, I just don't think in a world with Google I should have to baby-step you to information my little sister could find in about 10 seconds.

"C'mon if he prays and recovers then obviously prayer helped!" - I searched this whole thread and nobody ever made that statement.

Excercise helps release endorphins and staves off depression, increases circulation, hastens the metabolization of toxins, etc, all of which are beneficial to a person trying to kick a bad habit. Yet you compare something like that to a tree falling. What I find really odd is that, for some reason, 100 trees falling is supposed to be a better example? What does the quantity of falling trees have to do with anything?

And once again, you made the hardest assertions without offering anything, all you did was deflect. This all started becasue you made a declarative statement that you can't back up, "Believing in God does not help with recovery. At all." Arguments agaisnt this were very clear in stating that this cannot be said for everyone. You argued back because of "lack of evidence". Worse, your last lengthy set of responses to me were from a "higher statistics" point of view, WHICH WAS NEVER PART OF THE ARGUMENT TO BEGIN WITH. Essentially, you have changed the fundamental theme of the argument as you go along. You're either doing this for fun just to frustrate people, or all of this is actually a window into your thought processes. In the former case, it's psychologically fascinating.

[Miss Anthrope]

I know Miss - fork me, I'm done.  

I honestly can't believe what I'm reading on this thread. I didn't know there were atheists who weren't also skeptics.

Everything that someone thinks helped their recovered actually helped their recovery? How can you possibly think like that?

If something helps someone get through recovery even if its just because it gives them motivation or distraction, then of course it helped them! How can you even argue with that? If someone says "Rubber ducks" got me through my recovery but they never used/thought/whatever a rubber duck, then of ocurse you'd have to question their sanity. If the person fixated on rubber ducks, playing with constantly, talking to them, etc as a distraction, well, you could STILL question their sanity but the fact remains that rubber ducks helped them with their recovery.

I'm not done arguing, you're too much fun.

[Loffler]

I know Miss - fork me, I'm done.  

I honestly can't believe what I'm reading on this thread. I didn't know there were atheists who weren't also skeptics.

Everything that someone thinks helped their recovered actually helped their recovery? How can you possibly think like that?

If something helps someone get through recovery even if its just because it gives them motivation or distraction, then of course it helped them! How can you even argue with that? If someone says "Rubber ducks" got me through my recovery but they never used/thought/whatever a rubber duck, then of ocurse you'd have to question their sanity. If the person fixated on rubber ducks, playing with constantly, talking to them, etc as a distraction, well, you could STILL question their sanity but the fact remains that rubber ducks helped them with their recovery.

And there we have the disagreement in a nutshell. It's possible the person is wrong about the rubber duck helping them, even if they think it did. We can't just give out credit willy nilly to everything that was involved in a person's recovery. Well, we can -- if we want to be wrong.

Some people recover despite the rubber ducks in their life. Maybe I recovered, but I would have recovered faster if I'd stopped eating the magical paint chips that happened to contain lead traces. To hear you tell it, the paint chips helped me, because look at the evidence: I was sick, I ate the paint chips, I got better. That's a closed case in your book.

[Loffler]

I'm not unable to link to anything, I just don't think in a world with Google I should have to baby-step you to information my little sister could find in about 10 seconds.

Ok ok, I'll Google, let's see what I come up with:

"The idea that if you're not an optimist, you're not going to do as well with this disease is just wrong, and it's a terrible thing to lay on people," Holland tells WebMD. "What this confirms is that if you're not optimistic by nature, it won't affect your cancer."

Of course, that's just one doctor and author. He could be wrong. And that's cancer, not addiction. Let's Google Alcoholics Anonymous's success rate:

The biggest problem with Alcoholics Anonymous is that it has a very low success rate for long term sobriety. Accurate statistics are hard to come by because of many factors, such as anonymity and dishonesty, but most studies reveal that it only has about a 2.5% success rate for over 5 years of sobriety. Some statistics have it as low as %1.

Man, maybe I'm just a bad Googler.

[Miss Anthrope]

And there we have the disagreement in a nutshell. It's possible the person is wrong about the rubber duck helping them, even if they think it did. We can't just give out credit willy nilly to everything that was involved in a person's recovery. Well, we can -- if we want to be wrong.

Some people recover despite the rubber ducks in their life. Maybe I recovered, but I would have recovered faster if I'd stopped eating the magical paint chips that happened to contain lead traces. To hear you tell it, the paint chips helped me, because look at the evidence: I was sick, I ate the paint chips, I got better. That's a closed case in your book.

ANYTHING that served as a crutch PSYCHOLOGICALLY helped the person to some extent when you're talking about recovery from an addiction, science isn't needed to deduce the relevance of something that is of subjective value to a person.

In your analogy, paint chips with lead traces are harmful, so I would never claim that a sick person was healed by paint chips just because they got better.
Don't assume what is "a close case in [my] book". I never said anything that was ridiculous like that and so contrary to not just science, but common sense.

[Miss Anthrope]

Ok ok, I'll Google, let's see what I come up with:

"The idea that if you're not an optimist, you're not going to do as well with this disease is just wrong, and it's a terrible thing to lay on people," Holland tells WebMD. "What this confirms is that if you're not optimistic by nature, it won't affect your cancer."

Of course, that's just one doctor and author. He could be wrong. And that's cancer, not addiction. Let's Google Alcoholics Anonymous's success rate:

The biggest problem with Alcoholics Anonymous is that it has a very low success rate for long term sobriety. Accurate statistics are hard to come by because of many factors, such as anonymity and dishonesty, but most studies reveal that it only has about a 2.5% success rate for over 5 years of sobriety. Some statistics have it as low as %1.

Man, maybe I'm just a bad Googler.

The first link was about cancer, I already stated that it depends on what type of "sick" you're talking about. You didn't provide me with information I didn't already know.

I'm confused about the second link even more. I never said anything about AA, I've known for a long time that AA is proabably less successful than simply quitting on one's own. Have you assumed this whole time that I've been defending AA?

This entire argument started becasue of a declarative statement you made. when it was brought to your attention that it can't be said for everyone, you essentially said that you would need to see evidence that people use self-delusion to get through hard times. So, you could watch a person, first-hand, go through the process of "searching for god" and then use that search and faith to help them quit something and provide them with emotional support, but you won't beleive that their belief in God helped them if statistics show that it doesn't for most people. Not really surprising from someone who thought that 100 trees was more relevant than one falling tree in an already ridiculous example, like VanReal was supposed to slap his forehead and say "Oh, ONE HUNDRED trees! Now that's a different story!") Statistics will show that most people aren't allergic to peanuts, so does that mean peanuts will not cause an allergic reaction in some people? Statistically speaking, your chances of being killed in a plane crash are extremely low, does that mean no one, "at all", has ever died in a crash?

[Loffler]

No, I know what you're defending. You're defending the fact that every so often, someone believes in a delusion and also gets better. And apparently if it happens just as often as it fails, that still counts.

[Miss Anthrope]

No, I now what you're defending. You're defending the fact that every so often, someone believes in a delusion and also gets better. And apparently if it happens just as often as it fails, that still counts.

Well of course, depending on the scenario, and they don't even have to "match" statistically.You don't believe that things that happen outside of the highest statistic actually happen? What's true for most must be true for everyone?

If just one person used religion to help quit something, as you've already admitted does happen, it wouldn't "count", at all? Did it happen "outside" of scientific reality?

You don't know what I'm defending becasue you don't even have a clear idea about what you're defending.

You make WAY TOO MANY assumptions, btw. When i said I grew up going to church, I mean I spent some time between childhood and the teen years, 8-15. Enough to say I "grew up" going to church, but still that's only a quarter of my life. It's kind of absurd to not acknoweldge the relvance in the connections I made between using faith to recover from addiction and all the other ways I see people use some form of delusion to get through life. Jumping to the conclusion that it was simply selection bias would only hold water if my argument had been something like "No, you don't understand, people who turn their lives over to God are transformed, I've seen it with my own eyes." Since I wasn't, at any point, trying to claim such a thing as some immutable truth, it should have been pretty obvious that I was providing relevant information to counter your "Belief in God does not help people with recovery. At all." statement. According to Loffler, something else, some mysterious thing that science has yet to discover, helped those people and many others kick their habits. It was purely coincidence, I suppose,  that they just happened to quit right after coming to church for help and guidance.

And in case you're still confused about why people argue with you:

"Believing in God does not help with recovery. At all."
"I'm sure there are people who wouldn't have made it except for their religious beliefs."

"C'mon if he prays and recovers then obviously prayer helped!" - No one ever said this, so no wonder you were amazed to have read such a statement!

"It's a major failure of logic to assume two things occurring at the same time have to be connected just because someone claims they are." - No one ever said such a thing. it's a major failure of logic to think that the things people do or beleive to help them overcome addiciton are just "things that are happening by coincidence".

No one ever tried to make any fantastical claims about optimism and its relation to health, or suggested that arbitrary events that occur during withdrawal must be related to success.