I have no idea what he’s trying to say with this illustration on the column. God has a whip? He’s a bastard to make you behave?
But I could try, if the New York Times would give me a sinecure as their atheist columnist, and if I were willing to discard any self-respect I might have. After all, they do employ the most insipid theist they could find, Ross Douthat. He tried something slightly creative this week, trying to steel-man an atheist argument, badly. He presents his idea of The Best Argument Against Having Faith in God. It’s the problem of evil.
One interesting point about this argument is that while it’s often folded into the briefs for atheism that claim to rely primarily on hard evidence and science, it isn’t properly speaking an argument that some creating power does not exist. Rather it’s an argument about the nature of that power, a claim that the particular kind of God envisioned by many believers and philosophers — all powerful and all good — would not have made the world in which we find ourselves, and therefore that this kind of God does not exist.
That is correct. No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god.
Douthat follows the usual out — refusing to deal with a direct criticism of his version of god to ask, “what about this other god?”, a weaker god than his magical being. And then falls back on general apologetics.
You can’t fully counter the argument from evil with evidence of God’s existence because the argument doesn’t fully try to establish God’s nonexistence. And you can’t fully counter it with an argument for why God might allow suffering — as a necessary corollary of free will, for instance — because the claim isn’t about the existence of suffering but its scale and scope and excess.
What you can offer, instead, is a set of challenges rather than straightforward rebuttals. The first challenge emphasizes the limits of what the argument from evil establishes even if you fully accept it: not that God doesn’t exist, not that the universe lacks a supernatural order, but just that the traditional Christian or classical-theist conception of God’s perfect goodness is somehow erroneous or overdrawn. This still leaves you with the converging lines of evidence for some kind of cosmic order, some kind of crucial human role within that drama. And it still leaves you with various theological alternatives to make sense of that evidence: You could be a pantheist or a polytheist, a gnostic or a dualist, a deist or a process theologian, and more. The argument from evil might be a reason to choose one of those schools over traditional Christianity, without being a good reason to choose atheism.
He really just doesn’t like atheism. Anything else but atheism. He doesn’t bother to say what those the converging lines of evidence for some kind of cosmic order
are, though. But OK, sure, the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.
Douthat is a traditional Catholic.
Does he even read what he writes?
The straw he grasps at is that any good exists, and you can’t explain that, therefore God.
But it makes the problem of good — real good, deep good, the Good, not just fleeting spasms and sensations — at least as notable a difficulty for the believer in a totally indifferent universe as the problem of evil is supposed to be for the religious believer.
Which suggests that even if that evil makes it hard for you to believe in a God of perfect power, you still shouldn’t give up hope that something very good indeed has a role in the order of the world.
Except that we don’t need an all-powerful supernatural being to explain how the world works.
The ball is in your court, New York Times: I’m available. I don’t know if I could write anything as stupid as Douthat’s scribblings, though. If I read enough Douthat will that make me ignorant enough to take his place?
This is a really stupid argument. ‘Good’ implies a viewpoint. Good for whom‽ The Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl. Is this good or bad?
Ho, the theist cries, you picked an easy one. But there are some actions and events that are unquestionably good, such as… such as… well, there must be something. A brain worm dies before being able to reproduce. Good or bad? Have you no sympathy for the tiny unborn brain worms that might have existed? Examine any candidate put forward by the good-pusher deeply enough, and you will find the hidden biases.
Ah, but – the omni-god of the philosophers (omniscient, omni-potent, omnibenevolent) was an attempt to define the minimal requirements for god-hood. A being would need to meet these qualifications to be considered a god. So, if a god-candidate being could exist but could not meet these requirements, it could not be considered a god.
And as we all know, the bait and switch between YHWH of the Bible and the omni-god of the philosophers is the most common trick in Christian apologetics.
Is Douhat claiming that cosmic order is a convincing argument for God? But natural laws and forces actually explain that order, and quantitatively, not just as a handwaving appea. Are natural laws therefore a refuation of God? What does Douhat say to that? Or does he ignore it completely? That has always bugged me about theists, they won’t look facts in the face!
The moment that set me on the path to atheism was the story of Job. Here’s a guy who lived his entire life according to the wishes of God only to have it all taken away from one moment to the next. And when he demands God to explain himself for this, all God can do is say that he’s really really powerful and can do whatever he wants so Job should just suck it up (yes, there’s that whole bet with Satan thing, but God never uses that as a reason for his actions). This is the logic of your average schoolyard bully. What makes God so special that he deserves our eternal devotion and love if he can’t even clear that incredibly low bar? I never struggle with the thought of not murdering someone’s children just because I can but apparently that’s already beyond God.
So when Ross Douthat tells us we could only imagine “true good” when there’s a god, particularly the God of the Bible around…yeah, sorry, man, but I read the Bible and that god absolutely fails at even the most basic levels of decency. Even ol’ Zeus didn’t murder people just because he felt like it.
Sorry, but when did the burden of proof fall to atheism to disprove the existence of anything?
Doesn’t the “The Best Argument Against Having Faith in God” already assume that god exists?
I have no more faith in god than I have faith in Russel’s teapot.
I’m not against having faith in god, I’m not for having faith in god.
Show me some evidence that there is a god and then we can talk about having faith in such a entity.
But if the god you show me has as much petty vengefulness as illustrated in the religious stories my faith would not be of a worshipful kind, it would be faith that they are capricious and evil.
I try to imagine a Good God sitting idly by as entire star systems are sucked into black holes and their inhabitants, many of whom are undoubtedly sentient, die horrible deaths by the trillions. That’s neither good nor bad as far as the universe is concerned. It’s just the bad luck of local physics.
“try to imagine a Good God sitting idly by as entire star systems are sucked into black holes”
better yet, entire GALAXIES sterilized by hard radiation from a galactic core eruption.
In this, the best of all possible worlds, you must kill (or have killed) in order for you to live. Great plan, great world, great god.
In this, the best of all possible worlds, everything dies. Often alone, confused, and in pain. Often for no reason.
In this, the best of all possible worlds, the believers tell us their god has a plan – but they can’t say what it is and they’re unable to change it. Of what use is praying to their god?
(I begin to think that this is not, in fact, the best of all possible worlds.)
Trying to read his twaddle makes my eyes cross. What a waste of perfectly good air that guy is.
In the church that I was raised in (and in most of my friends’ churches), I was taught that God is incapable of evil because God defines good and evil; anything God does is good, and anything that opposes God or contradicts his commands is evil. Thus, God allows other entities, humans included, to do evil as a kind of loyalty test. God himself, however, never commits an evil act.
God kills the vast majority of humans because some of them don’t follow his orders? It’s a good slaughter, because God is good. God damns everyone who knows about him but refuses to follow him to unimaginable, eternal torture? It’s a good torment, because God is good.
Human dedicates their life to helping others, refrains from causing harm as much as is humanly possible, and does it all while refusing to bend the knee to God? It’s evil, both in works and in spirit, because God is what defines good, not humans. The human deserves Hell.
The doctrine of Hell is ultimately what caused me to lose my faith. I spent years convinced that I was almost certainly damned, despite being a Christian, and I could believe that. After all, I heard it from a pastor, and he’d know better than me, right? I’d certainly “mocked” God in the pastor’s eyes with my questions,* so God might feel the same way.
However, after a number of people I loved dearly, none of them Christian, were killed, all the preaching and teaching about Hell really started to grate on me. From what I could see, these friends all had very good reasons for not being Christian, so how could it be “good” that they were to suffer for all eternity? They’d already lived through Hell on Earth, and God never lifted a finger to help them through that. Why should they bow to a king who never did a damn thing except heap misery on them? Who wouldn’t protect them from his own servants?
I took a couple of years, but eventually that turned me against the God I’d been raised with for good. I didn’t become an atheist then, though. I started looking for another God, one who would protect me from the vicious tyrant lord I’d been raised with. I prayed to Isis. I didn’t get heavenly choirs on high in response, or even a piece of chatty burning shrubbery, so after a few more months I decided that gods weren’t real at all.
It took about a decade, but I eventually change my mind about that. I was a Christian atheist, meaning that my ideas about gods and how they acted were based almost entirely on Christianity. As I learned more about how other cultures view the concept of the divine, I came to believe that my prayers had been answered after all.
*The “mockery” in question was this: in confirmation class, we were taking a test that involved evaluating statements to determine whether or not they described a sin. If they described something sinful, we were supposed to write down which commandment they violated, and how.
One of the statements was: “A man and a woman sleeping together in the same bed.” I marked that it wasn’t sin just as the head pastor walked behind my chair.
“Really,” he said, loud enough for the whole class to hear, “a man and a woman together in the same bed isn’t a sin?”
“Um… no?” I answered, knowing from his tone that that was not the answer I was supposed to give, but not understanding why, “It just says they’re sleeping.”
“And you think they’re just sleeping,” he said, his voice dripping with scorn.
I did, in fact, think that ‘sleeping together’ meant sleeping. I was 11 years old, naive, and very literal-minded. I’d always thought that sleeping together meant sleeping together. I, an AMAB person, had slept in the same bed as girls before, and I’d never been able to figure out what the big deal was.
“Uh, well, that’s what it says?” I replied. I was starting to suspect how and where I’d gone wrong, but I was unsure enough to stick with my original answer. I was also humiliated; the whole class was laughing at me by that point, even though I knew from the sound of frantic erasing that at least a couple of them had marked the question the same way.
“Do you really think that a man and a woman can just sleep in a bed together,” he said, and then launched into a long sermon about all the things God wouldn’t forgive. Being mocked was at the top of the list. If you mocked God, it didn’t matter what you did. You were forever beyond salvation.
All of this was news to me. I’d been under the impression that God was all-loving and all-forgiving, but apparently not. I certainly hadn’t intended to mock God- my confusion had been sincere- but apparently that didn’t matter.
It is quite remarkable how it begins:
“Since last week’s newsletter offered a favorite argument for the existence of God, it’s only fair to balance the scales by considering a strong argument against religious faith, against the existence of some divine purpose behind life, the universe and everything.”
Right away, the purported (1) balancing the argument for the existence of God is not by (2) offering an argument against the existence of God, but rather by considering an argument against religious faith, and then conflating that with (3) an argument against teleology.
Which entails he believes any sort of religious faith depends on a belief in God, which we know not to be true, and furthermore that any faith in God requires teleological thinking, not just that he’s avoided actually attempting to do what he claims to be attempting to do.
(This, BTW, is why Deism was the go-to for post-Enlightenment thinkers)
—
(Theodicy amuses me)
No, no, stay away from the New York Times at all costs. You would go mad, nutso, squirrelly, cuckoo … Just ask Dr Krugman:
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/departing-the-new-york-times
[very interesting, petesh]
petesh@13 I have been considering dropping my subscription since Krugman left. Charles Blow also left. At least Jamelle Bouie is still there. There are a couple others I like, such as Nicholas Kristof. The reporting is adequate as well, but maybe no better than a free wire service or The Guardian, which is not paywalled..
I read David Brooks every now and then. Is he the second most insipid theist after Ross “Don’t” Douthat? Brooks is more amusing, less for what he has to say, than the sheer spectacle of watching a formerly complacent free-market conservative descending into despair.
On the main topic:
Phrases like “the converging lines of evidence for some kind of cosmic order” really set me off. First, what exactly are those lines of evidence? But second, what kind of order? Order shows up consistently in many dynamic systems both in nature and in computation. You don’t need an intentional agent to explain it. E.g., does Douthat think Jack Frost paints ice flowers on his window in the winter? Probably not. Where did those beautiful patterns come from? The task of empirical science is to explain where “order” comes from. It’s been doing a great job with many successes and with much left to do. Douthat just can’t be bothered to pay attention.
I never once considered the “problem of evil” to be relevant to my lack of belief. If anything recent events have made more more inclined to wonder if there are diabolical entities out there, doing things like pulling their chosen one just out of the path of a bullet. I mean how do you explain that one?
But seriously, positing God as the creator of the universe has no explanatory power over simply accepting the existence of the universe in itself. It just kicks the can down the road:
I will take Bertrand Russell over Douthat any day.
Take a serious philosophical objection, misrepresent it, then claim to have Proved God’s Existence. Brilliant.
Quite a stupidity mine, that one is.
Here:
pantheism — God and the Universe are the same thing; not a personal god
polytheism — more than one god cares about making people do stuff; not monotheistic
gnosticism — the idea that spiritual knowledge just bubbles up in us; not about a personal god
dualism — that there is some sort of non-physical realm of spirit; not about a personal god
deism — god is something that created existence and now it runs according to its design
process theology — (ah, the Seagull! (Segal)) — a bastardisation of Alfred Whitehead’s process philosophy to the effect that what matters in existence are processes, not things
None of those is anything like the Abrahamic perversions; that is, the people of the book.
(Theism means a personal god, and none of those qualify)
Pandeism, Panentheism, or Panpsychism… so many varieties of non-theism!
(Basically, accepting supernatural thingies is necessary but not sufficient for theism)
rx808 @9
It’s interesting that they assume the world existing is obviously better than it not existing. Even if we assume that God couldn’t do any better for some reason, that still leaves the option that God could have just not
I’m not convinced that existence is a clear good, but maybe that’s the chronic suicidal depression due to childhood trauma talking
There is so much here to unpack.
First, Douthat’s main disingenuousness is in quietly reversing the burden of proof, giving no overt acknowledgement of having done so. But the theist’s claim is the positive claim that bears a burden of proof.
In point of fact, “God” is an epicycle. Back in the day, this epicycle was invoked to explain lightning, or the seemingly magical properties of living things as distinct from rocks and other inanimate stuff, or an earthquake, etc.; but in this day and age it’s an epicycle in search of a deviation of the world from our models in need of explanation. The scientific method has been so hugely successful that there is very little that can’t be adequately explained now without appealing to the supernatural, let alone non-corporeal intelligences of some sort. I’d say there’s perhaps just four Big Questions left: what (if anything) caused the Big Bang, what is the underlying fundamental law of physics that will reconcile quantum mechanics and gravitation, why this law and not any others, and what exactly are qualia/under what circumstances do qualia occur? Three of those are physics questions; the fourth might be physics or it might be neuroscience, depending on the answer, probably the latter.
Add to that my own “signal and noise” argument against there being such a thing as “the supernatural” at all: the world is some combination of structured things and events and random noise, and that portion that is not random noise is by that very hypothesis full of regularities that can be discovered and stated as laws of nature. There’s nowhere for the supernatural to hide then except in unstructured, patternless noise, but noise is itself something we can model with statistics. In the end, “God” can’t be anything more than a random number generator void of meaningful agency, for any agentic god putting a thumb on the scale to support particular outcomes would leave a signal we could detect, a pattern of some kind in events, and that pattern would eventually be codified as just one more law of nature.
Put another way, any putative “god” that is actually intelligent and intervening must be physical, with a brain susceptible to some version of neuroscience and understandable motivations. Possibly over the complexity horizon of us barely-evolved apes, but not fundamentally apart from nature nor fundamentally inscrutable. Sufficiently Advanced Aliens or suchlike; not supernatural. And we’ve no evidence for anything of the sort, at least not intervening in Earth’s history or engaging in large scale astroengineering or such. Which brings things right back to the dearth of evidence and the proper placement of the burden of proof.
As for vucodlak’s pastor, there is another major problem with their position on that sleeping-together question: nowhere was it stated that this was happening out of wedlock. I’m given to understand that even the strictest sects don’t consider sex in wedlock to be sinful.
And what on Earth were they doing posing such questions to prepubescent children anyway?!
All those options, and the one we actually got was Pandemonium. :/
“And what on Earth were they doing posing such questions to prepubescent children anyway?!”
Indoctrinating them. Inculcating them.
Trying to shape their worldview while they are still pliable.
“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.”
(Didn’t work with either me or vucodlak, but it works on others)
So the logic is this: The most absolute iron clad and irrefutable argument against the existence of G is that: “If G existed, and if G had the characteristic of k, then e wouldn’t exist but it does so G doesn’t exist”. This is irrefutable and absolutely true.
As this is the most iron clad argument no other argument against G exists at all. Since there is only one argument against G and it assumes the G has k, through pure oversight all disbelievers in G never consider that G could exist without the characteristic of k.
Since that was never considered, we can assume there is overwhelming evidence all around us that G exists without the characteristic k.
The opposite of e is g. Since the existence of a G with k would make e not exist, It stands to reason that the only way that g, the opposite e, can exist is if G does exist.
So as g exists, G exists. And since the anti-G crowd weren’t so infallible after all, I’m just going to assume that G having the characteristic k being impossible wasn’t all that iron clad after all.
So G exist and it has the property k.
@ Bekenstein Bound, #20
My bad; I believe the question did specify that they weren’t married. I remember thinking it was an irrelevant distraction, since what we’d been taught about adultery said nothing about sleeping.
It’s interesting that you ask that, because I wound up spending the last two and a half years of high school at a newly-founded school attached to that church (it was a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod church and school), and the vague, abstract discussions of adultery, the sin of lust, and lust in one’s heart in confirmation class were the closest I ever got to any kind of sex ed.
In the LCMS high school, sex was never mentioned- by the faculty or pastors, anyway. Students talked about little else. I joined the school in the middle of its first year of operation, and my initiation into the student body was a lengthy and extremely thorough interrogation as to my sexual history.
My second year there, fully 10% of the school’s student body was encouraged to leave on account of being pregnant. They disappeared without a word to the students from the adults in charge, but we all knew why they were gone. It wouldn’t have looked good for the new school to have a bunch of unwed teenage mothers in the student body. Some of the moneyed conservatives funding the building of the proper school buildings might have had second thoughts about where their money was going. Still, we received no sex ed.
The fathers weren’t students at the school, but I very much doubt they’d have been asked to leave if they had been.
Bekenstein Bound–
There are religious groups that insist all sexual behaviour is inherently sinful, the Shakers being one example.
#22. Is that your logic?? If so, I suggest you read a book on logic. One of the rules is you don’t litter your propositions with bad assumptions. GIGO.
@25
I think that is the argument that doubt that is presenting in the opinion peace presented. I does come to the proper conclusions from the faith perspective, that it sounds like something from Abbot & Costello is no surprise.
I like it that I can imagine another apologist reading this and thinking ‘Stay off my side, you’re embarrassing’.
It’s a little bewildering to read a Catholic argue that “cosmic order” is some kind of proof of a god’s existence, when sainthood requires that a candidate be responsible for violations of “cosmic order” AKA “miracles.” Atheists might be more willing to consider the existence of a supernatural if praying to it immediately resulted in some huge breech of “cosmic order”.
Ross Douthat…tried something slightly creative this week, trying to steel-man an atheist argument, badly.
I’m sorry, I never got the point of this “steel-manning” thing. Why is it my job to make my opponent’s arguments look as strong as I can pretend they look? And why should I trust my opponent to honestly do the same for my arguments? Douthat’s silly pretend-counter-arguments pretty clearly show that “steel-manning” one’s opponent’s arguments is, in reality, just plain misrepresenting them.
I’m personally partial to the argument that God is ill-defined anyhow so until Ross lays out a proper definition (are we talking about one god? Multiple? Involved in human affairs? Formerly involved? Any specific religion–Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, et cetera? All-powerful? Omnipotent? et cetera et cetera) the question is meaningless.
Besides, the question I’ve always had regarding Catholicism–and Christianity in general–is, first of all, the contradiction manifest in the fact that several times the Old Testament says “this will not be changed, EVER” and then, surprise surprise, Christianity says it’s nonbinding.*
And second, applicable to all Abrahamic faiths, why was a flood–which drowned many innocent animals who had as far as we know done nothing wrong–chosen for Noah’s generation, rather than, say, a disease: targeted, and, if engineered to be so by God, fast and deadly. Noah and co could be given innoculations or just plain immunity.
*A selection: Leviticus 3:17, “It is a law for all time throughout the ages, in all your settlements: you must not eat any fat or any blood.” Leviticus 23:31, regarding Yom Kippur: “Do no work whatever; it is a law for all time, throughout the ages in all your settlements.” The same sentiment is also in Leviticus 16:31: “It shall be a sabbath of complete rest for you, and you shall practice self-denial; it is a law for all time.” Lev. 23:41, Sukkot: “You shall observe it as a festival of [God] for seven days in the year; you shall observe it in the seventh month as a law for all time, throughout the ages.” 23:21, Shavuot: “On that same day you shall hold a celebration; it shall be a sacred occasion for you; you shall not work at your occupations. This is a law for all time in all your settlements, throughout the ages.” (All are the JPS Contemporary Torah translation. It’s on Sefaria, an online library of Jewish texts, as I don’t trust Christian sources on this.)
“I’m sorry, I never got the point of this “steel-manning” thing. Why is it my job to make my opponent’s arguments look as strong as I can pretend they look?”
It’s not a job, it’s a supremely satisfactory way to take the most generous possible interpretation of someone’s claim and then demolish it. The superior person’s way of doing it, if you like.
Higher degree of difficulty.
“And why should I trust my opponent to honestly do the same for my arguments?”
Whyever would you need for that to be the case? If they don’t, you can point out how they are missing this or that in your actual argument. Then they have to do it again, and so forth.
Good fun!
Not even slightly, because he didn’t actually do that. cf. my #12.
Meh. “Steel-manning” can be fun sometimes, I guess. Or it can just be a waste of time. And people like Douthat (how is that name even pronounced anyway?) simply aren’t worth any more than the minimum amount of time needed to debunk their BS without dawdling.
(Also, if Douthat took the “problem of evil” as “The Best Argument Against Having Faith in God,” then yes, that is a bit of misrepresentation. There are plenty of much better arguments, such as lack of evidence, lack of claimant credibility, lack of consistency between claims, etc.)
You gotta understand it’s a term that inverts the concept of ‘strawmanning’, and steel is stronger than straw.
You did assert you did not get the point of it, I helpfully told you.
Well, my version.
Other versions talk about intellectual charity and so forth.
Dan Fincke wrote about it from an ethical point of view, for example.
Anyway. Surely you now understand he was in no sense ‘steelmanning’, so that you using what he did as an example of it is not warranted. PZ was using hyperbole, being a tad sarcastic.
(Again, see my #12)
[quietude, so… a bit more of my atheistic perspective about this little stupidity]
In case my ref to Deism was obscure, I refer to the classic bait’n’switch.
Here is a proof of God: [Ontological, Cosmological, Teleological]
Some magical cause for stuff and things and whatnot must exist, because surely it cannot be natural.
[missing step]
And therefore, Jesus fucking Christ and Mohammed the Pedophile and Yodh He Waw He.
Not sure that claiming God is unnatural is the best proof, but then, it’s not about actual proof, is it?
(It’s about attempting to justify belief after the fact)
PaulBC @15
Have you blocked all memory of Bret Stephens? At least as contemptible as Douthat.
Crucial to whom? Individually, we matter a great deal to ourselves and our loved ones. As a species, we’ve affected a bunch of creatures living on the surface of the Earth for the last 200,000 years or so. We’re pretty irrelevant to anyone living everywhere and everywhen else in the cosmos, and we’re unlikely to take up more than a tiny fraction of its apparently endless future.
I just don’t see why that’s a problem. Why this hunger for cosmic significance? The average citizen of rolls dice Uzbekistan doesn’t know or care about my existence, and a hundred years after my death almost everything about me will have been forgotten. So what? There’s no me in those places and times to feel unappreciated.
Believers talk a lot about humility, but many of them are so incredibly bad at it.
No? Sometimes the laws of nature make good things happen, sometimes they make bad things happen. That’s what you’d expect from an indifferent universe. I’m not sure why it matters if you add “real” or “deep” or capitalize the G.
The Problem of Good is a difficulty for anyone who believes in a wholly evil God, but they aren’t atheists.
It somewhat annoys me that every conversation about atheism seems to assume atheists are areligious, too.
They obviously aren’t.
And every conversation about a creator assumes godhood. Well what if our universe is the project of a mad scientist in another dimension, or even just a minor side effect of a routine high energy experiment performed by other-dimensional grad students? We can even add in the Ham-ish claim that the universe was booted into existence only a few thousand years ago, in its current configuration, and that it has no purpose. It’s just a statistical bump that will disappear if you repeat the experiment often enough.
As others have pointed out, most conversations about the existence of God or Gods or even just gods (spare me your ethnocentric arrogances!) assume that they know what they mean by that word, when the term was never defined. “It says so in this book.” – “That book was written by many people who demonstrably believed many different things.” Or, in fancy terms, the univocality of the Bible is a modern construct, and not in evidence in the text itself.
I don’t have a fancy story of becoming an atheist. I was an atheist long before I was able to think about it in logical terms. I didn’t trust people who wanted me to get enthusiastic about church. It seemed dangerous to me. The motivations were hidden, and seemed dishonest. I got so I knew to hide my distrust. Only later did I learn to reason about atheism. For me it never started out as “oh that’s illogical.”
So now I go, “it’s an eternal supernatural being you worship, and you’ve never asked yourself about their motivations? You’d willingly break any rule if you believed this being wanted you to do that? Because you read about it in this book written by bronze age goat herding nomads? Seriously? Tell me you never watched SG1 without telling me you never watched SG1.”
Anyway, Ham is a joke. It’s sad that he has the attentions of so many. There are some people, like Clint from “Clint’s Reptiles,” or Erika from “Gutsick Gibbon” (both excellent YouTube channels) who try to have serious discussions with creationists, and I wish them well. I find myself echoing Andrew Marvell: “Had we but world enough, and time, these weird diversions were no crime.”
@36
| Sometimes the laws of nature make good things happen, sometimes they make bad things happen. That’s what you’d expect
| from an indifferent universe.
I live in a small town in Oregon’s “red” country. We’ve always had a bad economy. Looking back to pre-Reagan years, we’ve got lower income and higher unemployment when compared to the neighboring “blue” counties.
We have all the churches, from Catholics to Mormons to Semple McPherson cultists and even more obscure. And some of my neighbors find other churches to go to out of town, a town of just 15K or so last census. So it didn’t surprise me to see someone kneeling on the wet sidewalk on a rainy afternoon, hands clasped in prayer. That’s how folks roll here. And it also didn’t surprise me to see that same person (very distinctive clothes) playing the Oregon Lottery at the grocery store’s lottery machine a day later.
I don’t know if they were praying to win the lottery, or if they were a gambling addict praying for help from a higher power. Both require belief in a purposeful universe. I think it goes hand-in-hand with learned helplessness.
@Helge #38,
It’s worth noting that 12-step explicitly doesn’t require your higher power to be supernatural. Mine is the collective knowledge and goodwill of social animals, and I communicate with it by asking friends and providers for advice, reading scientific literature, striving for intellectual rigor myself, and so forth. Obviously it’s not personal or transcendent or infinite or any of that stuff, nor is it always right. It’s just more likely to be right than I am on my own.
Glenn Rader’s Modern 12 Step Recovery replaces “higher power” with “resources outside of ourselves,” which appeals to a lot of people. Of course many other recovery groups don’t follow 12-step at all, and I belong to a number of them as well. LifeRing and SMART Recovery are both explicitly secular.
My first 12-step sponsor was a devout Christian, but she was fine with my atheism as long as I still constructed a concept of a higher power that I could believe in and draw on for help. I’m now sponsoring a Mormon and doing the same thing with her. It’s pretty interesting and rewarding.
That said, many local 12-step meetings and sponsors will pressure addicts to accept a particular faith. They’re not supposed to, but they do.
“It’s worth noting that 12-step explicitly doesn’t require your higher power to be supernatural.”
Heh. A technical thingy, for sure.
Yes, I know they have to adapt, because in the USA, for example, going into such a program is a great way to get brownie points from the legal system.
“My first 12-step sponsor was a devout Christian, but she was fine with my atheism as long as I still constructed a concept of a higher power that I could believe in and draw on for help. I’m now sponsoring a Mormon and doing the same thing with her. It’s pretty interesting and rewarding.”
Being a supporter and a friend is fine, this “higher power” shit ain’t.
I’m familiar with that, having argued it and read up on it in the past.
Care to share what your particular constructed concept of a higher power that you could (did you?) believe in and draw on for help? I promise I shan’t comment about it or about it’s implications, but I am curious, now.
“That said, many local 12-step meetings and sponsors will pressure addicts to accept a particular faith. They’re not supposed to, but they do.”
Of fucking course. That’s a given.
—
Anyway.
It’s not particularly more efficacious than other methods, it’s that it’s USAnian in origin and necessitates an expression of faith. Something bigger than you, that sort of thing. I do get it.
It worked for you, great. Not disputing that.
Can’t possibly work for the likes of me, of course.
(Intellectual honesty precludes it)
(Freemasons did a similar thing back when, of course)
“I am a feeble person and I can’t help myself without help from you, O God” type of thing.
Sounds even worse in that more generic form:
“I am a feeble person and I can’t help myself without help from you, O constructed concept of a higher power” type of thing.
Ah well, takes all types.
(Still… quite remarkable to me can possibly take that seriously.
Obs, thus these remarks :)
(Intellectual honesty precludes it)
Yo, John, are you implying that Prax is being intellectually dishonest? I don’t see that in their comment.
That said, many local 12-step meetings and sponsors will pressure addicts to accept a particular faith. They’re not supposed to, but they do.
Especially in smaller towns where one doesn’t have much choice of 12-step meetings to go to. But I’ve seen a bit of it in the DC area too; one person in a rehab group passed out copies of the 12 Steps with “Jesus Christ” in place of “our Higher Power.”
Not even slightly.
You are doing what O so many do.
Ignoring the substance of my comment, and solely focusing on the parenthetical accompaniment.
Here:
“Can’t possibly work for the likes of me, of course.
(Intellectual honesty precludes it)”
I refer to the likes of me.
I even fucking emphasised the point:
“It worked for you, great. Not disputing that.”
Do you even get I am for function over form?
For pragmatics over ideology?
(Not like I’ve been obscure about that, for those who can actually read what I’ve written!)
—
No, but you for fucking sure see it in my comment.
Informative, that is.
Here:
” Of course many other recovery groups don’t follow 12-step at all, and I belong to a number of them as well. LifeRing and SMART Recovery are both explicitly secular.”
That is rather creditable.
That also endorses every fucking bit of what I wrote.
Again: 12-step is not the very worst, but it’s about par, and only because the USA (and most places) are inhabited by goddists, or at least supernaturalists. Their magical help. In their heads.
Prax is actually saying that, though they themself got better using that mystical magical supernatural higher-power as one interprets it, they still endorse and actually practice with secular methods.
(That’s a creditable concession, which I left alone until you tried to poke me, Bee that Rages)
Yeah, nothing new.
Here, for you, I asked my freebie AI friend:
“In Chapter 17 of “The People of the Abyss,” Jack London provides a critical perspective on the religious quid pro quo of the Salvation Army’s charity. He observes that the aid provided is conditional, with recipients expected to participate in religious activities and moral instruction. London portrays this as a form of coercion, where the desperate poor have no choice but to endure religious sermons and prayers in exchange for meager food and shelter. He argues that such charity fails to address the underlying causes of poverty and instead imposes a moralistic judgment on the needy. London’s narrative highlights the inadequacy of this approach and calls for more compassionate and systemic solutions.”
Anyways.
—
(um, for the as yet-uninformed)
[Bridge]
Your higher power may be God or Jesus Christ
It doesn’t really matter much to me
Without each other’s help there ain’t no hope for us
I’m living in a dream of fantasy, oh yeah, yeah, yeah
@John Morales #40,
Not really. 12-step began because there were already recovery programs based in religion, and they weren’t working. Of course most of the original members were some flavor of theist/deist, because most everybody was back then. But almost everyone I’ve met in the rooms has stressed that your Higher Power can be anything. The group itself, the steps, a set of moral principles, a doorknob…if it gets you through the day clean/sober, then use it, and no one else gets to question it.
Are there still members who think everyone else would recover better if they just followed the right God? Yup. Do those members often become sponsors, precisely because they think their Higher Power is the bestest? Also yup. But that behavior is understood by most to be counter to the program.
Which it should be; the main problem is that the alternatives aren’t equally well-known and accepted by that system. I try to educate providers & counselors on the full range of recovery movements whenever I can: LR, SMART, Recovery Dharma, the Satanic Temple’s Sober Faction, etc. They all work about equally well on average, so far as I know; the main thing is just to get you socializing with a good group of people who know what you’re going through, can connect you with resources and wish you well.
I don’t think I would have chosen 12-step myself, if not for the fact that they have so many more in-person meetings, and in early recovery I really needed a bunch of friends who would literally come knock on my door if I went off the grid for a few days. Now I split my time between NA, ACA/DF, Swift Steps (the sober Swiftie community is awesome, even if I feel like a poser most of the time), and LifeRing. I figure any advice that all those groups agree on is probably worth listening to.
I mean, if my sponsee wants to argue God’s existence with me, I’m down. She knows I’m an atheist, and she knows my reasons. But my primary role is to support her in her recovery, and if her faith and her church involvement are helping her with that, I’m not about to undermine her support structure. This stuff is life or death for us.
I described it in the first paragraph of #39. It’s literally just people. (Well, and dogs. And elephants. And dolphins. And anything that’s ever inclined to be nice to something else.)
I’m pretty confident that people exist, and collectively they’re stronger than me and know more than me, and (at least in certain professions and communities) are generally well-intentioned toward me. So that’s it. Nothing magic.
Do I draw on it for help? Yeah, all the time. Like most people who’ve struggled with addiction, I tend to isolate myself and try to solve my problems with sheer willpower, and that generally doesn’t work out well. So it’s important to be intentional about telling others how I’m doing, asking for advice, reporting to them for accountability, etc.
I mean, I am a feeble person sometimes. Don’t need help from God, but I definitely need help from my therapist and my doctor and my landlord and my cashier at the supermarket.
That said, your take is certainly valid; there are many refugees from 12-step who experienced all the “powerless” and “surrender” and “abandon your self-will” language as controlling and disempowering. I think the original AA language assumes that you’re the cocky narcissistic type of addict, whereas many of us ended up using because we already felt powerless and beaten.
That’s just how I describe the process, and it has to be that generalizable if it’s gonna work for people of all faiths and none. Of course the individual person in recovery needs something more specific, because when you really want to do something that you really shouldn’t, a vague and half-believed concept isn’t much help in holding you back. (Some say “fake it til you make it,” but that’s never worked for me.) That’s what steps 2 and 3 are about.
@Raging Bee #44,
Ooh, yeah. I once got driven home (sober, ironically) by a police officer with that approach; he told me that 12-step wouldn’t work and it had to be Jesus specifically. I disagreed…but not out loud, because I don’t argue when I’m locked in a car with a guy with a gun.
In NA, at least in the Puget Sound area, you get lots of atheists and pagans and deists and Buddhists and whatnot. A significant chunk of the membership supports getting rid of the term “God” entirely from our literature, although I doubt they’ll be the majority any time soon. The topic came up at our regional convention last year, while we were discussing whether/how to switch to gender-neutral language.
The core AA literature will probably never change, because the Big Book is Holy Writ as far as most of them are concerned. There are a lot of secular groups under the AA umbrella, though.
Most people probably don’t think a pile of canine feces might be a , but hey, I get you.
(It could be anything)
—
“I mean, if my sponsee wants to argue God’s existence with me, I’m down.”
Yeah, me too.
(‘Course, I’m kinda atheistic. Hey, I had some JWs visit me the other day!)
“But my primary role is to support her in her recovery, and if her faith and her church involvement are helping her with that, I’m not about to undermine her support structure. This stuff is life or death for us.”
No. You are mistaken.
The addiction stuff? No worries.
The higher power stuff? I’d argue that, were I one such unfortunate person.
“That’s just how I describe the process, and it has to be that generalizable if it’s gonna work for people of all faiths and none. Of course the individual person in recovery needs something more specific, because when you really want to do something that you really shouldn’t, a vague and half-believed concept isn’t much help in holding you back.”
That’s how I described the process, too.
Again, and I noticed your evasion, so, again:
I’m familiar with that, having argued it and read up on it in the past.
Care to share what your particular constructed concept of a higher power that you could (did you?) believe in and draw on for help? I promise I shan’t comment about it or about it’s implications, but I am curious, now.
But hey, I get it. Claims are fine, sustaining them, not so fine.
I suppose I shall never ever know what your admitted construct was, nor whether you actually believed in it, will I? Oh no no no.
Fair enough. Shan’t press you any further.
(But you know. Secular thingies. What’s wrong with those, again? )
Maybe I should mention I was quite literally expelled from religious classes when I was a child.
I literally sat outside the classroom reading my books, because I was… um, disruptive.
Disputatious.
Anyway. Higher power, that’s the thingy.
(Wooooo!)
“I think the original AA language assumes that you’re the cocky narcissistic type of addict, whereas many of us ended up using because we already felt powerless and beaten.”
Um. I honestly think you don’t get it.
You write “cocky narcissistic”, I think “self-reliant and not needy”.
But hey, I’m an actual, true atheist. Not one of you mob.
John @49:
It was in the second sentence of Prax’s #39, and they repeated it in #48. How are you missing that?
Um, “Mine is the collective knowledge and goodwill of social animals, and I communicate with it by asking friends and providers for advice, reading scientific literature, striving for intellectual rigor myself, and so forth.”
I read that.
I wanted it reiterated or expressed or rephrased or explained or justified, because bloody obviously and prima facie that is not a “power”, nevermind higher or lower than a person.
Trust me, Rob. I did read it.
(My comments are bespoke)
Getting off an addiction: brilliant! all for it.
Helping someone doing that: same.
Having to pretend (or is it actually believe in, Prax was never clear about that aspect) that a Higher Power is what’s necessary, bah.
Again: “That’s just how I describe the process, and it has to be that generalizable if it’s gonna work for people of all faiths and none.”
That’s Prax.
Me: clearly, that is not needful; cf. the mention of secular alternatives.
(That’s me, Rob)
@John Morales #sundry,
Unironically, yes, that’s an option. Does your pile of canine feces work for you? Does thinking of it make you get up in the morning and take a healthy walk and check in with your counselor? When you’re in the middle of withdrawal, can you commune with that canine feces and find the will not to use? Fantastic, you’re done with Step 2.
Lots of folks become addicts out of peer pressure. In recovery, they generally learn to worry less about what “most people” think. There are much worse fates than looking silly.
No doubt you would, in which case you’d probably be better off in another organization; many people are. But that’s irrelevant to my sponsee, who came to me with her conception of a higher power already formed.
I’ve told you twice, you just don’t like the answer. Which is fine, because it doesn’t have to work for you. It’s amusing that you don’t seem to have an argument for why I shouldn’t believe in it, though.
Absolutely nothing, which is why I belong to one of them and recommend them to others. As I already mentioned.
I’m sure you do, and I’ll refrain from using that fact to draw unkind inferences. I was in fact describing Bill W., one of AA’s cofounders, and I think he’d probably agree with my characterization more than yours.
But here’s the thing. If you are in fact self-reliant and not needy, then congratulations! You probably don’t need to be in recovery, because you don’t have an addictive disorder in the first place. And most people don’t! Drug use (for instance) is not the same as drug abuse, which is also not the same as drug addiction. Many people really can stop anytime they like.
Recovery is necessary for the people who can’t. As Step 1 says, their lives have become unmanageable; they’re facing jails, institutions and death. They are not fully self-reliant almost by definition, and if they think they are, that’s where the cockiness and narcissism come in.
Believe me, I’ve been self-reliant about many things in my life. But recovery is one of the things I need, like my antidepressants and my friends and my HRT and my asthma medication. Take those away and my mental and physical health go south very rapidly, regardless of my intent. If that’s not true for you, I’m very happy for you.
Ah, argumentum ad dictionarium. It’s not measured in watts, either!
“Higher power” is a technical term; its meaning is defined by the community that uses it. Mine fits the definition in our literature, and everyone else in NA that I’ve told about it has accepted it, so we’re good. Not our problem if you don’t know the lingo.
But as I said before, there are secular versions of the 12 steps with different language. Modern 12 Step says “resources outside of yourselves.” AA Agnostics of the SF Bay Area says “the collective wisdom and resources of those who have searched before us.” Do those phrasings work better for you?
“Needful for John” and “needful for the community of people with addictive disorders” are very different things.
I don’t need Recovery Dharma, for instance; tried it, didn’t work well for me. It’s still worked great for a lot of other folks, and I’m still going to mention it to people looking for an organization. Everyone’s recovery path is a little different.
“Unironically, yes, that’s an option. Does your pile of canine feces work for you? Does thinking of it make you get up in the morning and take a healthy walk and check in with your counselor? When you’re in the middle of withdrawal, can you commune with that canine feces and find the will not to use? Fantastic, you’re done with Step 2.”
I pity the person whose very life depends upon relying on dog poop.
But hey, I can’t dispute you. Hopefully, you’re not one of those who think dogshit is a higher power.
Kinda evasive, there.
“Higher Power, no?” That’s the thingy.
But not as amusing as it is to me that you find that amusing.
Go for it.
“the collective knowledge and goodwill of social animals” is your higher power.
Kinda abstract, no? Birds flocking, I suppose. :)
So?
“But here’s the thing. If you are in fact self-reliant and not needy [etc]”
So, you feel that the 12-step is for people who are not self-reliant but are needy.
(So, they have to come up with God or a higher-power construct do get fixed, right?)
FFS! It’s the fallback from Goddishness.
It’s fucking bullshit.
Sure. But there’s no need for a , right?
You said there are secular alternatives.
Therefore, if they are actually alternatives, it follows that this stupid “you are a feeble thing that needs some higher power” is not necessary.
It works on some, so… sure.
(Not that sure that the cure is better than the disease, but. Fucking “higher power”, technical as it may be, is stupid if taken even half seriously. Seriously)
—
… what makes you imagine I’m not an addict? :)
(Or more to the point, that I was not in my past?)
—
Point being, one most certainly does not need “Magic Thing” to get going.
Someone to support you? Sure.
Meetings with peers? Sure.
Look. You have a support group, great. Someone who mentors you, sure. Nice.
Nothing there about a “higher power”, which we both know is just a label for whatever.
Even dog shit.
PS:
Well… leaving aside what I personally think of ‘agnostics’ (cowards), how the fuck that is supposed to be something like a to which one appeals and upon which one depends is not explained. A bit like saying a library is a Higher Power, no? Bah.
(Intellectual cowardice is not admirable, Prax)
[context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narconon ]
Again, and I noticed your evasion…
Evasion? What evasion?
Shan’t press you any further.
…followed by seven more comments…
That’s mainly due to Rob’s intervention I reckon, RB.
I did get this gem:
“Unironically, yes, that’s an option. Does your pile of canine feces work for you? Does thinking of it make you get up in the morning and take a healthy walk and check in with your counselor? When you’re in the middle of withdrawal, can you commune with that canine feces and find the will not to use? Fantastic, you’re done with Step 2.”
Unironically.
John Morales #56-58,
I pity the person whose life depends upon relying on chemotherapy or dialysis, but that doesn’t mean they should stop relying on those things. Again, there are worse things than being pitied.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that; it was your hypothetical example in the first place. I just wouldn’t judge them if they did.
I have no idea what this means, I’m afraid.
No, birds don’t usually flock out of any flavor of “goodwill;” that’s a self-protective behavior, not an affiliative or altruistic one. Allopreening and feeding each other would qualify, though, and mobbing might depending on the motivation. Thank your local crow for being a good citizen!
But yeah, I’ve owed a lot of my mental health over the years to dogs and cats who’ve been affectionate with me. So I’m happy to include them in my higher power. Besides, humans just aren’t that special compared to other social critters. Lots of species share information with each other, cooperate, and do each other favors.
I don’t know why you agreed with me that everyone’s recovery path is different, then immediately said this. Some people don’t need one, others do. For me, it’s basically optional but often helpful. I like looking at the same issue through different lenses.
That would only follow if the secular alternatives were fully accessible to all, which they’re not (remember that lack of in-person meetings I mentioned?), and if the secular alternatives worked for everybody, which they don’t. Nothing works for everybody.
For you, it may not be. For those who have ended up homeless, psychotic, suicidal, maimed, guilty of crimes from littering to drunk driving to murder…yeah, it’s often better.
If I hadn’t progressed along the path of recovery, I’d be dead or institutionalized right now. That’s a predictable consequence of the state I was in two years ago. And it took me a while to recover enough to say this, but I actually don’t even want to die most of the time, which was not the case for the last fifteen years. So the cure was definitely better than the disease for me. Doesn’t have to be for you though!
I didn’t say or imply that you weren’t one. But you’re not the entire community of addicts, right? You’re just one person, and other people have different desires and needs. One would have to be narcissistic to deny that, and you’ve already rejected that label.
If you were an addict in the past and are no longer, congratulations on your recovery. That’s a great place to be.
It’s not a label for whatever. Your higher power does have to satisfy certain conditions in order to be useful in your recovery, and you verify that in your second and third steps. It’s just that none of those conditions require it to be any flavor of deity.
It’s quite easy to appeal to “the collective wisdom and resources of those who have searched before us.” You just, y’know, find those people and ask them. Or read their writings, or listen to their talks, or observe their actions. Humans are good at the whole cumulative culture thing.
And if you don’t like the phrase “higher power” because religious people use it too, well, neither did these folks! That’s why they changed the language to something that suited them better.
If reading is very important to you, then sure. I know that some AA folks view the Big Book as their higher power, so I’d imagine that an entire library qualifies too.
And yet you clearly depend emotionally on your interactions with this community, which contains quite a few people you consider intellectual cowards. That’s why you’re still with us, no? Personally, I’m happy to be a component of your higher power. :)
But no, I identify as both an agnostic and an atheist because that seems intellectually honest to me. I don’t believe, never have and probably never will, but I also don’t think it’s an empirically testable question. I don’t find it courageous to claim a certainty I don’t actually have.
Context for what? Narconon’s not a 12-step organization and doesn’t claim to be, nor does it use “higher power” language. It’s also just as anti-science, cultish and generally awful as the rest of Scientology, but I’m not sure how that’s relevant here.
“I pity the person whose life depends upon relying on chemotherapy or dialysis, but that doesn’t mean they should stop relying on those things. Again, there are worse things than being pitied.”
Not the same thing. Apples and oranges, to be clear.
Neither chemotherapy or dialysis are what you described, in your very own words, as “constructed a concept of a higher power that I could believe in and draw on for help”.
(Traditionally, that’s a talisman; renaming it a Higher Power doesn’t change the concept)
“I don’t know anyone who thinks that; it was your hypothetical example in the first place.”
“Unironically”, you wrote.
The implication is clear: a piece of dog shit is equally valid as God, for the purpose of this program.
So long as you believe. (Or, should I say, Believe?)
“I have no idea what this means, I’m afraid.”
Hm. Here: compare “could believe in” with the less equivocal “believe in”.
” Some people don’t need one [higher power], others do.”
No. Categories.
You’ve made it damn clear that it’s just an abstraction that is constructed; a type of emotional crutch.
And hey, I’m fine with that. Seriously. Kudos.
I feel much the same about placebos, too. Some need them just as much.
But a placebo is not a medicine, is it?
(Think about it; is that not a form of psychotherapy? Originating from religion and religious thinking?)
“For you, it may not be.”
Which is exactly the same as writing “For you, it may be.”
(Always with the conditionals, eh?)
FFS. “Does your pile of canine feces work for you? Does thinking of it make you get up in the morning and take a healthy walk and check in with your counselor? When you’re in the middle of withdrawal, can you commune with that canine feces and find the will not to use? Fantastic, you’re done with Step 2.”
Remember that? Unironically.
You don’t get what I’m saying.
One does not need to make up a Talisman and stuff, in principle.
(I already mentioned the benighted USA, did I not? The legal system thingy?)
Yes, of course.
But not just anything, it has to be believable and Talismanic.
(Shepherd Book: “I don’t care what you believe in, just believe in it.”)
You can change the language, you can’t change the conceptual structure.
Lipstick on a pig, basically.
As I noted earlier, I’ve read up on the 12-step programs.
<clickety-click> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Twelve_Step_alternate_wordings
You imagine you’re making some point?
You reckon my life would spiral into pitiable degradation and death were I not to comment here?
I like to entertain myself and inform others, so doing that is relying on a Higher Power?
… OK. I don’t, myself.
Anyway, that’s just bullshit. Not credible.
Fucking obviously, if one looks at the original program, that Higher Power was God.
And it’s supposedly a thing with agency that can actually change you by its power, not some fucking Talisman.
A set of rituals, is what it is. And of course support from the sponsor and the group and whatnot.
—
Religious thinking as therapy, with pig-lipstick on it.
(obs, narconon is much worse, but same category of thing, in my estimation)
It’s quite easy to appeal to “the collective wisdom and resources of those who have searched before us.” You just, y’know, find those people and ask them.
Yeah, I heard “higher power” defined as someone/something that’s more powerful than you and cares about you (so no, dogshit wouldn’t qualify). And if you find a group who care about you, and they can help you do necessary things that you can’t do on your own, then the group can qualify as a “higher power.”
You can change the language, you can’t change the conceptual structure.
Maybe not (though it’s hard to verify that claim since “conceptual structure” is a vague thing that’s hard to observe directly); but changing the language can change how people interpret and apply the concept being described. And that’s the important bit, since that’s what determines how well a principle works, or doesn’t, for this or that particular person.
“Maybe not (though it’s hard to verify that claim since “conceptual structure” is a vague thing that’s hard to observe directly); but changing the language can change how people interpret and apply the concept being described.”
It’s not just , it’s by its very nature not amenable to it.
(What part of ‘conceptual’ eludes you?)
—
So, are you a proponent of linguistic determinism? Newspeak?
The strong form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?
It’s not a thing; it’s what they call a ‘McGuffin’, to get people to submit to group indoctrination and love bombing and the equivalent of a political officer. Sorry, a sponsor.
Placebo. I already covered that.
Better than nothing, but you have to admit you are a worthless thing that’s helpless without the Higher Power. Baked-in, that is.
[The feather in ‘Dumbo’]
Here, for you, RB: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James.
“But here we have mind‐cure, with her diametrically opposite philosophy,
setting up an exactly identical claim. Live as if I were true, she says,
and every day will practically prove you right. That the controlling
energies of nature are personal, that your own personal thoughts are
forces, that the powers of the universe will directly respond to your
individual appeals and needs, are propositions which your whole bodily and
mental experience will verify. And that experience does largely verify
these primeval religious ideas is proved by the fact that the mind‐cure
movement spreads as it does, not by proclamation and assertion simply, but
by palpable experiential results. Here, in the very heyday of science’s
authority, it carries on an aggressive warfare against the scientific
philosophy, and succeeds by using science’s own peculiar methods and
weapons. Believing that a higher power will take care of us in certain
ways better than we can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw
ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the belief, not only not
impugned, but corroborated by its observation.”
Um, maybe I over-estimated you, RB. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_on_a_pig
@John Morales #62,
I didn’t say they were the same thing. But they’re all things that one’s life can depend on, which is what matters. If you think they differ in a way relevant to this discussion, feel free to name it.
Why wouldn’t it, and why should we be bound by this particular tradition?
Provided you can work the steps with it, it is indeed. But that doesn’t mean that there’s anyone out there who’s actually trying to work the steps with a piece of dog shit.
OK? I could believe in Jesus as my higher power while following a 12-step program; some do believe in him; I don’t believe in him. What follows from this?
And some people need crutches. Abstraction’s pretty important to human thought, too.
You’d have to come up with a specific example, but I could be convinced.
If someone actually needs it, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. It’s often not the best medicine, because many placebos have undesirable side effects and by definition they require deceiving the patient. Still, if you’re talking someone off a ledge, placebo away with my blessing.
Sure. Are you against all forms of therapy? You and I are coming from very different places if that’s the case.
I didn’t want to assume your experience. If you tell me it wasn’t necessary for you, then I believe you.
You got me! That was hyperbole; you’re not yet done with Step 2. Actually working that step will take a bit longer. But it’s still gonna be the same thing: does it meet the necessary conditions to be helpful in your recovery? Great, use it. If it doesn’t meet those conditions—and there are plenty of God-concepts that don’t—then you have to find something else or work a different program.
I’m well aware of that, but we don’t live in the world of principle. An effective recovery program is based on what works in practice. Medical and social services designed for an ideal client are pretty useless in the real world.
Some people need talismans. I’m not one of them, nor are the other nonbelievers in 12-step organizations, but I still care about those people.
Believable is easy in this case. Do you not believe in libraries?
And no one except you is talking about talismans. If you want to start a program which requires a talismanic higher power and then complain about it, please feel free to do so. I will not be in that program, so I won’t care.
I’m really not sure how to make it clearer. I’ve had two sponsors, and have explained to them both that my higher power is made of people, that it’s not capable of any sort of magic or miracles, that it can be wrong, that it did not create the universe, that it cannot guarantee that everything will be okay in the end, that I’m a lifelong atheist, and so forth. They were fine with that, and have never tried to convert me or invite me to church. I’ve talked to dozens of other members about my higher power; they’re all fine with it too. I’ve heard them talk about non-divine higher powers themselves. I’ve gone to regional conventions where we’ve advocated for removing all references to God from the literature; nobody got mad at us. I’ve worked steps two and three in detail, twice, and they came out fine. The only person here who is telling me that my higher power must actually secretly be God is you, which is odd, because you don’t believe in God any more than I do. Not sure why you’re trying to convert me.
Er…why not? Creating and altering concepts is one of the things language is for. Do you think that specific religious concepts are coded into our genes or something?
It certainly could be! We provide for you that which you cannot provide for yourself: entertainment, an appreciative audience, friendship. Of course I have no idea how important FTB is to your social network, nor how you would respond if you lost it. But isolation isn’t great for most of us monkeys.
No worship is necessary, mind.
Of course it was; the people who started AA were believers, albeit believers dissatisfied with organized religion.
But I don’t follow the original program. I don’t even follow the modern AA program; NA was created by people who found that AA didn’t work for them. And LifeRing and SMART Recovery and Recovery Dharma and so forth were created by people who found that twelve-step didn’t work for them.
Each recovery organization’s program is created and recreated by the people who currently practice it. Human institutions tend to work that way. We can apply Newtonian physics without believing in Newton’s god.
Wait, so now it’s not a talisman? But it’s a being with agency? I think you’re arguing entirely with yourself at this point.
OK, but if it doesn’t share the actual features of 12-step that you’re objecting to, I don’t see how it supports your argument. Yes, taking people off all their psych meds and overdosing them on niacin is bad, sometimes lethally so. Yes, putting people in saunas so they can “sweat out the drugs” is stupid. If your recovery organization does stuff like that, go somewhere else.
@Raging Bee #63,
“More powerful than you and cares about you” is often interpreted very flexibly, though. One piece of NA literature says:
“Many of us use spiritual principles as a power greater than ourselves. We come to believe that, by practicing these principles in our lives, we can be restored to sanity….practicing a better way of life by living according to spiritual principles, will eventually have an effect on our thinking.”
The “spiritual principles” in this example are not alive, sentient or caring, nor do they have any power beyond what you give them by thinking about and practicing them. They presumably express care, though, and they’ll hopefully help you care—or else you should find something else.
The “doorknob” example I gave earlier is one that was given to me repeatedly. So I’m pretty sure that if you found a doorknob or piece of dogshit sufficiently inspiring, and you could explain in steps 2 and 3 how it could guide you to a better life, the fellowship would be fine with that. It’s just that very few people are inspired by doorknobs and dogshit in the first place.
That is certainly true, and was another example given to me. Didn’t click with me, because I was already plugged into other recovery groups and the scientific literature and the healthcare system and so on, and I wasn’t going to privilege 12-step over all of those. But a lot of addicts come into a meeting straight off the street, with limited education, legal trouble, poor physical and mental health, and no friends more reliable than their dealer. Committing to the nearest group of recovered peers is often a smart move for them.
“If you think they differ in a way relevant to this discussion, feel free to name it.”
I already have: “Not the same thing. Apples and oranges, to be clear.
Neither chemotherapy or dialysis are what you described, in your very own words, as “constructed a concept of a higher power that I could believe in and draw on for help”.”
<blockquote><blockquote>(Traditionally, that’s a talisman; renaming it a Higher Power doesn’t change the concept)</blockquote>
Why wouldn’t it, and why should we be bound by this particular tradition?”Why wouldn’t it, and why should we be bound by this particular tradition?”
OK, I give up. You’re not engaging in good faith.
It doesn’t change it because it’s the very same concept.
Renaming stuff is magical thinking.
(“The Golden Bough”)
Bah.
—
You’re for sure trying ever so hard.
Bait and switch. Moat and bailey.
Your God is a piece of shit, maybe. Depends.
Belief is the thingy.
—
(sigh)
No. You do not, surely.
You’re working super-hard to not understand me.
(I, however, perfectly understand you, O religious apologist)
[meh. Prax is not quite Praxis]
@John Morales #64,
I promise, I haven’t love-bombed my sponsee. She gets a hug if she wants one, though. And I do love her; she’s an admirable young woman and a friend. I loved most of my students when I was a teacher, too.
As for indoctrination, I’ve also taken her to non-12-step meetings in case she finds their programs more empowering. I’m perfectly happy for her to jump ship as long as she stays in the larger community…though she does live in the same town as me, so for now I hope she’ll keep attending a few 12-step meetings for the opportunity to socialize in person.
There are absolutely abusive sponsors out there, to be sure, and I wouldn’t tell a random addict to get one; it’s a dice-roll. I just wanted to be available for those who asked.
If you feel that helplessness and worthlessness are equivalent, that’s kind of a you problem.
Again, a lot of people do find the “powerless” language unhelpful and/or harmful, and they choose another program because of it, as they should. I accept it because it’s a very specific kind of powerlessness: powerlessness over my addiction, when that addiction is active. Doesn’t mean that I’m powerless to anticipate and avoid relapse triggers, or to improve my mental health and resilience, or to reach out to others for help if I’m slipping; it’s just that once I’m in that final stage, I’m there until someone or something stops me. So it’s important that I exercise all the power I do have to avoid ending up in that state again.
You’re powerless over gravity if you walk off a cliff, so make damn sure to keep away from it in the first place, sort of thing.
“If you feel that helplessness and worthlessness are equivalent, that’s kind of a you problem.”
Pig. Lipstick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program#Twelve_Steps
“Again, a lot of people do find the “powerless” language unhelpful and/or harmful, and they choose another program because of it, as they should.”
Ahem:
@48: “I think the original AA language assumes that you’re the cocky narcissistic type of addict, whereas many of us ended up using because we already felt powerless and beaten.”
Your own words.
@John Morales #70,
You still haven’t explained the relevance to this discussion, John. What property do chemotherapy and dialysis share, which my higher power does not share, and which makes the first two more valid tools for maintaining and improving my health than the third?
Think eighth-grade essay here! Diagram your argument!
Circular reasoning is circular.
I’ve described my “higher power” concept to you multiple times now. Other people have pointed this fact out to you. If you’d like to argue that it’s equivalent to a talisman or a god by identifying specific points of similarity, you’re welcome to do so. If you’d like to convince me that I shouldn’t call it a higher power, you…probably can’t, because you’re not a member of the community in which I use that language. But you can try.
I don’t have a god. Who are you arguing with?
Your confidence in your infallibility is touching, and definitely neither cocky nor narcissistic. :)
“You still haven’t explained the relevance to this discussion, John.”
No. You did a Nelson on it. By now it’s evident to me you’re pretending to not get my point about magical/religious thinking. Or your own point, even, that secular alternatives exist, but the religious-type programs are for many all that is available.
There are secular alternatives to surrendering to a fucking “higher power”, but there are no alternatives to actual medicine. Akin to a placebo, conceptually.
O, so very mysterious.
Here, again:
No. Categories.
You’ve made it damn clear that it’s [the just an abstraction that is constructed; a type of emotional crutch.
And hey, I’m fine with that. Seriously. Kudos.
I feel much the same about placebos, too. Some need them just as much.
But a placebo is not a medicine, is it?
—
See, now you’re claiming that I have “confidence in [my] infallibility”.
I see that all the time.
Look, you’re putting propositions and contentions forward, and so am I.
(I get it; the weight of reality is on my side)
@John Morales #73-74,
…aaand, that links to language that includes “powerless” but does not include “worthless”. You prove my point: the equivalence is only in your head.
Do you actually think that anybody without power is worthless? I kind of hope not.
Yeah, and I’m talking about the exact same thing in both quotes. Those addicts who are not cocky and/or narcissistic often feel powerless and beaten to begin with, which is a major motivator for their addictive behavior. Thus the “powerless” language in the 12 steps is not helpful for them, which is why they should and do choose another program.
The “powerless” language is helpful for those addicts who come in thinking, “Screw everybody! I’m on top of the world, I see farther than anyone else and I can do what I want!” Bill W. was that sort of guy.
If you see a contradiction between the two quotes, please point it out.
“ …aaand, that links to language that includes “powerless” but does not include “worthless”. You prove my point: the equivalence is only in your head.”
@48: “I think the original AA language assumes that you’re the cocky narcissistic type of addict, whereas many of us ended up using because we already felt powerless and beaten.”
Your own words.
—
“Those addicts who are not cocky and/or narcissistic often feel powerless and beaten to begin with, which is a major motivator for their addictive behavior. Thus the “powerless” language in the 12 steps is not helpful for them, which is why they should and do choose another program.”
except
“That would only follow if the secular alternatives were fully accessible to all, which they’re not (remember that lack of in-person meetings I mentioned?)”
You really, really should remember everyone can see what we’ve written.
2001 version:
(1)
I see a disconnect between someone who thinks “Screw everybody! I’m on top of the world, I see farther than anyone else and I can do what I want!” whilst simultaneously admitting they are powerless over alcohol. One, or the other. Not both.
(2)
Made yourself believe in a self-generated construct, but one which is still a power greater than yourself.
(3)
[search and replace God with Higher Power]
“I don’t have a god. Who are you arguing with?”, you wrote.
Well, no. Not a god. ‘cdesign proponentsists’ type of thing.
(The referent in the conceptual structure, but it’s all very opaque to you, no?)
@John Morales #76,
…and if they’re all that’s available for many, then a subset of that many will need them, no? Because they need a program of this type, immediately, and the 12-step ones are all they have access to.
I know you can follow the logic here! I believe in you!
There absolutely are medical alternatives to chemo and dialysis, though. You’re conflating the entire edifice of “medicine” with specific procedures, just as you’re conflating the entire recovery movement with specific groups that may be appropriate or inappropriate for a particular person.
See, now you’re claiming that I have “confidence in [my] infallibility”.
Hey, you’re the one who said you “perfectly understand” me. Sounds pretty confident to me.
I’m pretty sure that I don’t perfectly understand you, though I’d like to. Never had a knack for that perfection thing.
“…and if they’re all that’s available for many, then a subset of that many will need them, no?”
Only because a proper, secular, non-religiously based way of thinking about stuff option is not available.
Look: you keep going on about secular alternatives, and then you also go on about the only option being the Higher Power thingy. Not all that secular, that. If you don’t get why I think that by now, you never will.
Your belief changes nothing other than your own behaviour, and thus others’.
Magical thinking, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.
You might have gotten over your addiction, but now you use magical thinking to get by.
(I’ve already alluded to that, but you were O so defensive you missed it)
<
blockquote>Hey, you’re the one who said you “perfectly understand” me. Sounds pretty confident to me.</
blockquote>
Well, I have your measure now. You were telling me about my alleged “confidence in [my] infallibility”, and you think that’s exactly the same as being able to understand what you’ve written.
I get what you’ve written. That doesn’t make me infallible, outside your caricature of me.
It’s not complicated. I get you, perfectly. I just happen to think it’s weak-ass stuff, and I don’t like you lauding religiously-based ritualistic therapies.
I concede that the support offered to their victims is better than nothing.
But then, you condede there are secular alternatives. Your own words.
(Why would you have written that, unless the 12-step is not secular?)
Or the understanding thing, evidently.
Look, shall we leave it here?
@John Morales #78-79
You’re just going to keep posting random quote combinations and saying “your own words,” aren’t you? It’s a nice Gish gallop, I admit.
…yep, that’s one reason I provided for why a secular alternative might be better, and one reason I provided for why a 12-step alternative might be better. Which is why I’m glad both exist.
Please at least explain the contradiction you apparently perceive. Don’t be a Gish.
That’s the point, John. An addict who starts with that mindset needs to change it, which involves making that admission. If they have a severe misunderstanding of their own power and level of control over their life, they’re not going to get very far in recovery unless they can correct that misunderstanding.
If you think you’re all-powerful, you need to learn what you’re powerless over. If you think you’re globally powerless, you need to learn where you do wield power. Different lessons are appropriate for different people. Is that really so hard to understand?
And “humanity plus other social animals” definitely wields more power than I do, so I’m good there.
There’s a lot of things greater than me, you know. Gravity, the Walmart company, the Washington state government, pretty much any group of at least two people…yet none of those things are a god.
Which is exactly why we were advocating changing the language at the convention, and why the secular 12-step groups I linked you to have done so already. Not all of us have a god, and many of us who do have a god don’t have a male one, so we’d rather have all that language gone.
Haven’t had a god ever, so there’s not really anything to cut and paste conceptually. If you’re objecting to copying any language that’s ever had a religious meaning, well, mea culpa. rimshot
“You’re just going to keep posting random quote combinations and saying “your own words,” aren’t you? It’s a nice Gish gallop, I admit.”
Your cargo-cult terminological argumentation is duly noted.
Religious thinking is not better.
And, again, when you (your own claim) concede that there are secular alternatives, you perforce concede the 12-step program is not secular. Despite the terminological search’n’replace.
I have. Unambigously. Redundantly.
FFS. You are making shit up.
So bloody obvious, for the non-magical thinking types:
“Screw everybody! I’m on top of the world, I see farther than anyone else and I can do what I want!” is the mindset you admit must be changed before one becomes all helpless and needy.
Which entails that, until that change is made, anyone who thinks “I can do what I want!” is hardly gonna roll on their back and expose their tummy to the Powers That Be. Oh, sorry, Higher Power.
Again, from 2001, from my link above:
(3)
Step 3.
(Am I wrong?)
—
mea culpa. rimshot
I told you it was about the conceptual structure.
You are helpless petitioner who gives themself to a Higher Power.
Thus you overcome your addiction.
The group meetings and the sponsor and the support network and all that, well… that’s just the trappings, no?
It’s about this . The actual things that actually help, well… only incidental.
I’ve made that very, very clear.
—
Funny how you came in this particular thread. Goddishness, but sublimated.
(Oh, no. No goddishness, just helplessness and the need for a Higher Power, which you concede is but a constructed abstraction. Not worthlessness, just a professed lack of agency without the magical construct)
“You’re just going to keep posting random quote combinations [blah]”
Random to you.
From my quotation above (1902, not recent):
“Here, in the very heyday of science’s
authority, it carries on an aggressive warfare against the scientific
philosophy, and succeeds by using science’s own peculiar methods and
weapons. Believing that a higher power will take care of us in certain
ways better than we can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw
ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the belief, not only not
impugned, but corroborated by its observation.”
Not random at all.
@ John Morales #81,
Not only because of that; also because many believing addicts are unwilling to attend a secular organization, as they think they’ll be shushed or mocked if they talk about their faith. (Which they often are.) And yes, in principle it would be nice if they didn’t have this fear, but here we are in the real world again, with people who behave inconveniently but still need help.
So, two reasons for the need. I do what little I can to mitigate both of them, but in the meantime, gotta meet folks where they’re at.
And I was hoping it would thereby change your behavior, but perhaps that’s a lost cause. I’ll try despair next!
…okay, and you don’t know what “defensive” means. This is troubling.
Someone who was defensive would not miss that, because they would be extremely vigilant about potential insults or criticisms. I just didn’t care very much, because unflattering allusions are part of your idiom. One tunes them out after a while.
I’ll take the allegation seriously if you want to support it, though! In what way do I use magical thinking?
C’mon, you said, “(I, however, perfectly understand you, O religious apologist).” If you want to walk that back to just understanding what I’ve written, feel free, but—
—never mind. Just can’t help yourself…
Great! That’s all I’m saying.
Not sure if it’s really a concession if I listed those alternatives in my first post on the topic, but if it makes you feel better, sure. I grudgingly and painfully so concede.
Sure, if you like. I’m still hyper, but it’s that toddler energy where I’ll probably fall dead asleep in half an hour. Had fun though!
Hey. Your own claim.
@61: “That would only follow if the secular alternatives were fully accessible to all, which they’re not […]”.
You keep ignoring the fact that many people are coerced into it, because the alternatives are worse.
(Which does not make it better, just more accessible)
—
Perceived need. You yourself noted secular options work, and now you say “except the religious types are worried they’ll be mocked”. The non-religious types who have to cop the non-secular version (or do more jail time or not get that job or whatever, well. Tough titty, right?
A forlorn hope. I’m not the wooish type.
No. It’s amusing you essay that little gambit.
So, because I perfectly understand you, you hold that I hold myself to be infallible.
Since your cleverness is being demonstrated, be aware that what I understand is what you’ve written.
(And, of course, your evasions and prevarications and equivocations. Something you “could” believe in, you wrote. Not something you actually believe in. I notice these things)
“Great! That’s all I’m saying.”
Fine. Yes. A properly run 12-step program with good people is better than nothing.
Yay!
“Not sure if it’s really a concession if I listed those alternatives in my first post on the topic, but if it makes you feel better, sure. I grudgingly and painfully so concede.”
But you still (ostensibly) haven’t got that the very fact that secular alternatives exist means there is no need in principle for the wooish “Oh I’m so helpless and must rely on the Higher Power” thingy. And that it’s sometimes all that’s available, or that goddists might be worried about being mocked are not good reasons for its existence.
—
“Sure, if you like. I’m still hyper, but it’s that toddler energy where I’ll probably fall dead asleep in half an hour. Had fun though!”
No worries. Carry on.
(That was an offer to you, not a plea :)
Well, better than nothing for the truly desperate and needy.
(I know you also didn’t get the ref to People of the Abyss, either.
To you, it was random)
FWIW, another totally random link and quotation:
“Court cases shown below are pertinent to mandated attendance at support group meetings and an overview of the reach and implications of those decisions for both the layperson and the legal professional.
“In the United States, the practice of requiring those involved in the criminal justice system to attend 12 step meetings without the choice of a non-faith-based option stands at best on shaky constitutional ground and at worst can subject court and prison personnel to liability for money damages.“
— Claire J. Saenz, Esq., former SMART Recovery Board Member”
(https://smartrecovery.org/court-cases)
John Morales #83-84
Your own words.
…wow, this is easy.
Sweet Christmas, I introduced those secular alternatives into this thread forty-five posts ago. Yes, of course 12-step is not secular. But there are those of us who work the program in a secular fashion, successfully and without pushback. Doesn’t work for all non-believing addicts, wouldn’t work for you, but it works for us. That’s what I’ve been saying all along.
This is a tantrum, not an argument.
And that’s why admitting your powerlessness over addiction is step one. If you can’t do that, then you’re not gonna be able to do the other steps anyway. (Of course, it’s also going to be a problem for you in most other recovery programs. Can’t help someone who doesn’t think they need help.)
No one ever said step one was easy! All the steps take time and work. Admittedly, step one was quite easy for me, but I’m the depressive and self-loathing sort of addict. Step two was harder because it required that unfamiliar “hope” deal.
You are, because I didn’t write step three. It wouldn’t have had “God” in it if I did.
I am a person who needs help, which is not the same as being globally helpless. Black and white thinking is a common failing among addicts, but the truth is more nuanced.
And yes, I give as much of myself to my higher power as necessary. I’ve surrendered myself to psych wards when I was in crisis. I’ve gone to rehab and worked its program. I follow the advice of doctors and researchers and therapists. I listen to other people who’ve been in the same situation and can share experience.
And it turns out, all that stuff works! I am not irrevocably broken; other people can help me. I chose the right higher power for me. I’d have been screwed if I chose God, though. The whole “nonexistent as far as I can tell” thing is a serious drawback.
Um, no. That’s how people help me. Without that stuff it wouldn’t be…help.
Nothing incidental about it. If you can’t think of specific ways in which your higher power can actually help, and what you can do to help it help you, you’re not gonna finish the work for steps two and three. That’s literally what they’re about.
Plenty of religious addicts don’t make it through those steps, you know. Their god thinks they deserve to suffer, or is too holy to be bothered with their problems, or something like that. In that case, they have to alter their understanding of their god, or choose something else to be their higher power. Some do this, others give up.
See, I’m not William James and it isn’t 1902. This is why I keep asking who you’re arguing with.
And yet:
“Here, in the very heyday of science’s
authority, it carries on an aggressive warfare against the scientific
philosophy, and succeeds by using science’s own peculiar methods and
weapons. Believing that a higher power will take care of us in certain
ways better than we can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw
ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the belief, not only not
impugned, but corroborated by its observation.”
It’s not disputing you; it’s the view of a psychologist who specialised in religious ideology.
Me earlier: “(Think about it; is that not a form of psychotherapy? Originating from religion and religious thinking?)”.
You: “but she was fine with my atheism as long as I still constructed a concept of a higher power that I could believe in and draw on for help”.
It’s perfectly (heh) pertinent.
—
“You are, because I didn’t write step three. It wouldn’t have had “God” in it if I did.”
That’s the version without the search/replace. The ID thingy.
(You are O so disingenuous!)
—
“And yes, I give as much of myself to my higher power as necessary. I’ve surrendered myself to psych wards when I was in crisis. I’ve gone to rehab and worked its program. I follow the advice of doctors and researchers and therapists. I listen to other people who’ve been in the same situation and can share experience.”
The first sentence is not like the others. The others exist outside your head.
45 Resident Troll
Heh. Amongst the usual multi-comment blathering windiness, I found this particularly funny. 90%, at least, of Morales shtick is taking perfectly functional colloquial figures of speech literally in order to manufacture something to attack, due to his habitual lack of any valid arguments.
Which is, like, a textbook example of addressing form, while ignoring function. X-D
But tell us more of your casualness as to form, Captain Hyperliteral, lol.
(P.S. You’re the blogs best argument for retiring Gumby text – it was meant to mock trolls, not equip them.)
Well, that’s my very point from the start.
You came in claiming it was somehow ecumenical, and lauding it.
I noted it’s a religious construct in its form and so religious thinking is necessary.
You immediately bristled: “It’s worth noting that 12-step explicitly doesn’t require your higher power to be supernatural.”
Incidentally, a corollary is that if one can LARP it by pretending to believe and still manage, then the Higher Power is, as I noted, a Talisman. Dumbo’s Feather.
Again, the support provided, the group meetings, the expectations from peers, the sponsor… all great things. But all real things.
The woo bit is not necessary. Obs.
Me, I’d prefer a program that makes me feel empowered over one that requires me to feel helpless.
One that would tell me I can manage with a little help from my friends, not one that makes me submit and be subsumed to a Higher Power.
But, as you note, that’s not the non-secular way.
[Ah, the slyme comes out. Meh]
43/92 translates to 46.7%. Crap…@93 just screwed my numbers up.
Very important to note that, Hemidactylus.
A most excellent contribution to the topic at hand!
The way religiosity is embedded in our milieu, so that 12-step programs are lauded, that’s not worth a mention.
(Did you fail to note it was an extensive discussion?)
Surely you could not have possibly foreseen that I would respond to this passive aggressive yet cowardly little attempted dig by you. That makes it a +1, right there.
(Me, me, me. You’re becoming a second Silentbog)
@John Morales #86-88,
Again, I said “not only”. Reiterating one reason I gave does not invalidate the other reason.
Accessibility is one factor. Compatibility with the individual addict’s faith or lack thereof is another. And, as you brought up, requirements set by various courts are a third. All three factors affect whether a particular addict, in a particular location, will need to attend 12-step.
I’m not ignoring that, just pointing out that it doesn’t make their need less dire. If you live in a food desert, you have to eat shitty food. It would be better if you had more options, and the rest of us should empower you with such if we can, but starving yourself in the meantime doesn’t solve anything.
Actual need. Addicts that can’t manage to recover often die, spend their remaining lives in prisons or institutions, etc. So they need paths to recovery.
If you want to say that’s just my perception…okay, I guess? Pretty confident about that one, though.
Well, or die. I wasn’t in any legal trouble, but I did want to avoid dying, so I joined some of the local non-secular groups.
Would it have been nice if there was an in-person secular recovery meeting in town? God, yes. We’ve talked about starting an in-person LifeRing meeting in western Washington, but our current members are just scattered too sparsely around the Sound. It’s on my bucket list.
Of course I could have just started my own one-person meeting, but that wouldn’t have been much help social support-wise.
Perfect understanding of something does imply infallibility in that area, I would say. Feel free to disagree.
You apparently didn’t notice when I wrote:
“I could believe in Jesus as my higher power while following a 12-step program; some do believe in him; I don’t believe in him.”
How can I make that less equivocal for you? Give me a god or other supernatural being, I’ll tell you whether or not I believe in them. Spoiler: the answer will always be no.
I don’t care about “in principle.” I’ve already agreed with you on that non-secular recovery organizations would be unnecessary in an ideal world. I just think that health and social services should be tailored to the world we actually live in.
Oh yeah, that went way over my head. What little London I’ve read was long, long ago.
That’s certainly a quote I that agree with. It’s kinda randomly chosen if you’re using it to argue against my positions, though.
@95
The thread exploded into TL/DR. I had seen someone present on a secular sobriety alternative at a freethought group meeting years ago. Maybe SMART based. Seemed ok, maybe harkening back to Ellis or Beck. I’m not fond of higher powers, yet if court-ordained that’s that. I guess it could be rationalized into a collective conscious wisdom of crowds secularization that works.
Going back to Helge @38: “I don’t know if they were praying to win the lottery, or if they were a gambling addict praying for help from a higher power. Both require belief in a purposeful universe. I think it goes hand-in-hand with learned helplessness.”
Then Prax @39: “It’s worth noting that 12-step explicitly doesn’t require your higher power to be supernatural. Mine is the collective knowledge and goodwill of social animals, and I communicate with it by asking friends and providers for advice, reading scientific literature, striving for intellectual rigor myself, and so forth. Obviously it’s not personal or transcendent or infinite or any of that stuff, nor is it always right. It’s just more likely to be right than I am on my own.”
…gets at the crux. I was thinking of the oceanic feeling of transcendent spirituality that as an alternative may work for people as it’s larger than themselves.
I don’t think I’m opposed to your questioning as much as to how it takes place. People swat at gadflies. And there’s the amount.
Morales, could you please learn how to make a strong point and then…stop? You don’t have to continually fuss over everything. It’s exhausting.
John Morales @90 & 92,
…but it’s not disputing me, so why bring it up to me? Especially when it was part of your conversation with Raging Bee in the first place? What point are you hoping to make, to one or both of us?
If you’re just pointing out that James believes that religion can be helpful to some people’s health, well, yeah. He was one of the founders of pragmatism. I’m somewhat pragmatic myself, and on this point I agree with him. Thanks for the support, James.
If you’re citing James for the proper meaning of “higher power,” then, again, it’s irrelevant because I’m not James, he’s not an NA member and it’s not 1902. Language evolves.
And I already agreed with that in #68, and asked you whether you were against psychotherapy in general. I’d still like to know, if you care to say; otherwise, good on you for supporting James’ thesis, I guess?
The criticism in Kitzmiller was that Panda drafts defined “creation” and “intelligent design” near-identically. The typical 12 steps don’t define “God of our understanding” at all, and the accompanying literature emphasizes that you get to define it yourself, which is where the “of our understanding” bit comes in. And then you do define it yourself in the steps.
See, if you think that the lesson of Kitzmiller was just “search and replace sucks,” you gotta follow the logic more carefully.
The first sentence summarizes the others. I went to some trouble to choose a higher power that exists outside my head. You may continue to criticize other conceptions of a higher power that I don’t hold, and I will often agree with you, but continue to wonder why you’re doing it in this particular conversation.
I didn’t use the term “ecumenical” at all, though even if I had, you could hardly refute that by pointing to religious connections; ecumenical institutions are usually religious.
Most 12-step organizations describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious, a distinction they find quite important (as do many people.) That distinction is not terribly meaningful to me, but what’s important for me is that religious thinking is not required for membership and participation. Philosophical thinking is, though, and for believers the two usually overlap.
No, John. Helge brought up the topic of addiction in #38, replying to my earlier post. I wrote the above in reply, in #39. You first addressed the topic afterwards, in #40, responding to me. Therefore, I could not possibly have written it as a response to you, bristly or otherwise.
Are you familiar with the term “delusions of reference?” I’ve actually had them, while in active addiction. Tricky buggers.
I think most people would, yes. And I hope you find one if you need it!
I certainly had to submit at the psych ward, I confess; non-compliance doesn’t make them let you out any faster. Don’t recall any subsumption, though.
In fact, one of the doctors told me that I needed to detransition and father children, in order to strike back against the global war on men. I did openly disagree with that one…but politely, as he determined if and when I could leave.
…and then I see PZ’s #98. Stopping now.
Yeah, sorry. I did get carried away.
So John admits he’s powerless over his addiction to endless quibbling and attention-hogging. I hope he finds a group who can help him with that, and soon…
No. John does not admit that, O bee that rages.
Raging Bee @102: So you’ll be looking for groups that can help you with “can’t leave well enough alone”?
One last comment from me: Kudos, Prax. Respect.
Most people can’t handle a proper disputation with me, you most certainly did, each of us got their points across, we truly engaged.
(Thank you)
@105
It’s the disputing part that tends to get out of hand. On this thread your “Intellectual honesty precludes it” got taken the wrong way, but it is hard for some to read you charitably enough given past interactions.
Your later “Intellectual cowardice is not admirable” is a bit hard to fathom, especially after your dig at agnostics.
You and Raging Bee have some history. On the recent “I get email — flu brain edition” you said in response to RB “You sure are showing me up!
(It’s OK, I know that to be embarassed you’d have to have half a clue, so no worries, eh?)” which you later backed away from a bit, but it shows you sometimes hit send before proper reflection. I can see RB being a little sore given.
I harbor no resentment, but it’s something to think about for the future. Ruffled feathers.
More topically I myself have some interest in the history of therapeutic approaches like REBT and CBT. Motivational interviewing and dialectical behavioral therapy are others. REBT and CBT influenced SMART which Prax and you have mentioned.
You might want to switch gears into a less confrontational Socratic approach and tone down the gadflying a bit. There’s a pattern that can’t be entirely on the others here as it recurs. Stoically speaking I might have more control over my own responses than how you act, but that’s a stretch.
Actually before the subthread that ensued Helge’s point about learned helplessness struck me, but that got kinda lost way back there.
“You might want to switch gears into a less confrontational Socratic approach and tone down the gadflying a bit.”
What can I say, but that I get you are well-meaning in that little bit of patronisation?
It’s not Socratic, and as for ‘confrontational’, well… tell you what, you confront me to the same degree, and I can give you my judgement.
FWIW: I quote Prax, whom I praised (in my own way):
(cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology) )
Takes two to tango, and most dance partners can’t make it past the first pass.
(We know each of us is real)
I’m not much of a dancer, especially not the tango, but dancing is usually a cooperative affair. A tango would fall apart quickly from one-ups.
Prax: “Had fun though!””
Prax has earnt my respect.
Unlike some others.
@John Morales #105,
No worries! I really did enjoy it. Sorry for getting too, well, performative at times. I get hyped up on the competitive wordplay and forget about the possibility of hurt feelings.
@Hemidactylus #106,
Well, we can certainly return to it! What were your thoughts on it?
I’ve never been a gambler myself, but it seems to me that gambling addiction must make you crave control while simultaneously abandoning it. Superstitions, rituals, prayers, statistical fallacies…a thousand futile tactics to predict the outcome of a process that’s been carefully designed for unpredictability. Meanwhile, the one point of control you do actually have over the process is when to walk away, but addiction’s incredibly good at making you give up on that bit.
It’s the antithesis of the serenity prayer, really; you refuse to accept what you can’t change, and you’re too scared or dazzled or deluded to change what you can.
The believers I’ve known in recovery kind of learn to fine-tune their attitude toward God on the fly. If they need to remind themselves to take charge, it’s “God helps those who help themselves” or the parable of the drowning man. If they need to remind themselves not to fight the inevitable, it’s “Let go and let God.” And I respect how well so many of them learn to do this, but man, from the outside, it just seems like an exhausting and superfluous layer of cognition. Like introducing an infinite quantity into your calculations just so you can cancel it out later.
To me it’s just so much simpler to stop worrying about a possible being that can do anything, enable you to do anything, and prevent you from doing anything, according to its own whims and intentions that you admittedly could never understand.
To hark back to Douthat, why spend your time fretting about the “crucial human role” that some incomprehensible imperceptible transcendent thing might have in mind for you, when you could instead choose to inhabit that role and fully exercise what little power it affords you? The one really crucial thing about it is that it’s your role, after all. No one else can play it.
But I guess god-thought becomes more emotionally rewarding when you just can’t help feeling that there’s Something out there. I’ve never had that feeling in my life, not even in altered states of mind, and at this point I no longer feel the need to explore such states. So it will always be beyond my experience.
And now that’s enough word-vomit.
Prax@110
Well it struck me in its novelty. Helge@38 didn’t elaborate subsequently that I can tell, but it seemed an interesting point. I am more familiar with religion being likened to an existential Skinner box where adventitious reinforcement leads to superstitious patterns.
Learned helplessness itself was a concept developed in a rather horrific abusive manner upon hapless animals.
The Wikipedia says: “In humans, learned helplessness is related to the concept of self-efficacy, the individual’s belief in their innate ability to achieve goals. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from a real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.”
As for a religious context I found:
“Other effects of religious views on mental health can be seen in the somewhat controversial condition known as religious trauma syndrome. Formally labeled in 2011 by human development consultant Dr. Marlene Winell, RTS describes a collection of symptoms that are often seen in those who have had a harmful experience with religion. RTS can result from the experience of belonging to a controlling religion or develop as part of the impact of departure from certain religious groups. Symptoms might include fear, anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, depression, and difficulty functioning socially. Often, individuals experience intense fear at the thought of divine punishment, even when they no longer believe in the doctrine of a particular religion, and this fear and distress may follow them for years after their departure from the religious group. Other symptoms may include feelings of worthlessness, learned helplessness, and acts of self-harm.”
https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/religious-issues
And: “Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding” or “trust and obey.” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.
I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today?” Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.”
https://truthout.org/articles/religious-trauma-syndrome-how-some-organized-religion-leads-to-mental-health-problems/
So…not much to go on. No idea if RTS is a solid notion. And Helge may not have had anything that formal in mind.
Weirdly enough this believer put it more clearly and succinctly. The doctrine of original sin is what instills learned helpless because it is so bleakly disempowering. Religion then furnishes a convenient out from that state. He goes on to make the cafeteria option of focusing upon Gospel Jesus and ignore the rest. Problem solved?
But yeah, maybe original sin? Add a dash of Calvinism and we get the doctrine of hard work, frugality and a system of prosperous meritocracy.
@Hemidactylus #111
I’m aware. Pavlov was a…special man; I figure a good medium could look at him or Harry Harlow and see them surrounded by the vengeful ghosts of their research subjects.
It’s expressed in the freeze/flop/faint/fawn trauma responses, for people (and animals) who’ve found fight and flight to be ineffective. I’m freeze/fawn myself, but working on it.
Yeah, never understood how anyone familiar with gaslighting could hear those and not think they were giant red flags.
Sounds like it overlaps with depression, anxiety and maybe dependent personality disorder, all of which are common sequelae of trauma.
Seems pretty solid to me. It’s not a diagnosable disorder under the ICD or the DSM, at least not yet, but the DSM is really conservative on trauma-related diagnoses. The DSM-V does list “Religious or Spiritual Problem” under its V-codes for other clinically relevant conditions. The ICD-11 includes complex PTSD, which would almost certainly cover RTS, possibly coupled with the billing code for “Religious institution as the place of occurrence of the external cause of the injury.” But of course these codes don’t raise provider and researcher awareness the way an explicitly listed disorder would, and they can be misused by a provider who thinks you’re just in the wrong religion.
Some Swedish Word of Life survivors founded Religious Trauma Day, which seems like a great way to raise awareness.
Not for me. I suppose the gospels are empowering for those who already believe in original sin, but that’s just an imperfect solution to the problem Christianity itself created. Better solution: reject the doctrine of original sin and no redemption is necessary.
Still, plenty of social activism and personal recovery is driven by Christian beliefs, so obviously it works that way for many people who aren’t me. As John said upthread, it’s sort of about repurposing a preexisting conceptual structure: If Jesus can help you escape original sin, then he can also help you escape [insert any social or personal issue that makes you feel unhappy and helpless here]. It works as long as it encourages your own efforts instead of replacing them.
I don’t think it’s particularly historically accurate to read the Gospels as a self-help manual, but it’s probably more accurate than reading them as an endorsement of modern conservative Christian behavior, so there’s that.