Alcoholics Anonymous
From RationalWiki
Alcoholics Anonymous was the first of the "12-step" recovery groups teaching recovery from alcoholism through following a set of 12 steps. While AA has undoubtedly helped many alcoholics to recovery, it is problematic for many atheists, because AA relies on a belief in a supreme deity ("God") as an inseparable part of the program. The steps are:
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
As you can see, 7 of the 12 steps mention God, prayer, a spiritual awakening, etc. In addition, AA's Blue Book (the main book of AA writings) includes an essay addressing this issue, "We Agnostics", which essentially states that there is no way around belief in a supreme deity if you want the AA program to work and that agnostics and atheists will need to draw on enough faith to believe in God, who in turn will reveal himself.
For this reason AA is probably not for everyone.
On the other hand, AA is non-sectarian as to which conception of deity each member holds, and in practice AA groups and individual members may vary widely as to what extent they emphasize religious belief as opposed to the emphasis official AA literature places on it on paper. So, if your conception of a higher power happens to be the Flying Spaghetti Monster that's perfectly okay.
