God Job

Yes.

Any believer will tell you that every single moment is a God moment. And non believers will tell you there is no such thing as a universe ordered and maintained by an entity any smarter, stronger, wiser, funnier or even sexier than themselves. It is not the degree of vulnerability or gullibility or adamant conviction here that fuels this discussion. This is actually a subset of the larger question, which is: are you a believer or a non-believer? It appears that most on this forum are non-believers, although I think there's room for minds to be changed through personal experiences (and NOT through influence or coercion). Atheism is fine. Agnosticism is fine. Belief in God is fine. Everybody gets one vote, and no one's vote should be ridiculed, even if it means people believe in coincidences, serendipity, fairies, ghosts, or the Rainbow Bridge.

Is this the best you all have in your mission to bring down AA? Isn't there something important for you to discuss, infiltrations and secret recordings of angsty revelations at meetings? Really.

"I hated the term." Well, of course you did.

Have you considered that the deaths of the people in the car wrecks ALSO proved that God exists?

If this is "nothing but complete nonsense and a total waste of time", and you "can't emphasize it enough", and you are "free of that garbage", what, then, prompted your total immersion in the discussion?

You're not any more free than Clara is. You are just as shackled to the negatives of the program as Clara is the positives.

Yes! Round and round we go. I drank because of my ego so I need to come here and work on my ego and get some humility so let me tell you all about myself and where my alcoholic thinking got me -oh sorry, did I interrupt you? It's my ego again and I surely need to work on that and I will as soon as I can get together with my sponsor but in the meantime I will definitely share about it tonight because I have to talk about it and work on me. It is a selfish program after all.

is it more ridiculous to have an attitude of faith in divine intervention or to disdain those having an attitude of faith in divine intervention? Occupation or avocation ...

Weedy patch of fallow = low intensity cultivation (I've read this somewhere)

Very well put, hs. I can't even imagine (though I've had numerous friends tell me) how messed up American religious views look from outside our borders.

Yeah, this needs to be kicked out for good. It's ridiculous. My rehab had a chapel in it, and we were all assigned a chaplain as well as a counselor. The chaplain was the person we were supposed to work steps 1-5 with. There was also something in the chapel called "The God Box". We were encouraged to write down problems we thought were too big for us to handle and put those papers in the God Box. Everyone was encouraged, whether Christian or not. Even the one Hindu patient. I'm surprised it wasn't an assignment, most things were.

You have NO idea how much more messed up that all looks from my perspective now.

"But isn’t this minority view the exact interpretation of God that the AA religion promotes?"

This was not my experience.

"Tbh, if I were God (and I don’t want to offend anyone here), I’d tell such people to grow up, take responsibility for their own bloody problems, and stop wasting my time."

This is precisely the kind of God many people are looking to dump when they get into AA. They've been told to fuck off, do it themselves, and that nobody gives a shit about them almost all their lives. They are seeking compassion, not derision.

Those who buy the God package must buy the complete package. They cannot buy the warranties that secure their safety, their economic viability, their continuing good health or their involvement in a happy, loving relationship with a significant other, as if these are options, and then decline the risks of stillbirths, cancer, financial ruin, divorce, paralyzing accidents, kidnappings, murders. Those who buy the God package must know that these things are all in the box when they get it home.

As for the atheists and agnostics, I would assume that they accept full responsibility for each and every good, bad and indifferent thing that comes their way. They have no partnership with a higher power, so who else is there to credit for anything?

"Good things are direct actions by God, but bad things aren’t? To think otherwise is nothing but smug, complacent, superstitious nonsense." (Don't you mean "to believe this is so" rather than "to think otherwise"?)

I don't believe everyone who accepts God into his or her life thinks the misfortunes are not part of the package. They are human. Perhaps they had been hopeful. But when they are devastated or injured or ruined, God is not absent or unaware. The fact that they so often rail against Him in times of trouble signifies that they know He is present. I don't think they are smug or complacent or superstitious, I think they are grievously disappointed or despondent because something didn't turn out they way they wanted it to. They're allowed to grieve that disastrous outcome without being considered smug, don't you think? It takes time to recover from setbacks, whether one believes in God or not.

The issue of personal faith has plenty to do with the issue of recovery. The placebo effect is a genuine phenomenon; don't discount it. And please bring to the fore your concrete ideas regarding how to treat the matter of addiction "seriously".