I hate sounding like a broken record. I've read here several accounts of atheists and agnostics getting through AA without a belief in God. Others recommend I read the "We Agnostics" chapter in the Big Book. Someone bought me a copy of the Big Book yesterday at AA. I read the chapter. Now I'm more confused. The chapter seems to be suggesting that sure many of us we're atheists or agnostics, but after immersing ourselves in the steps, we came to find the power of God, or a Creative Intelligence. An example:
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When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material world and life as we see it, there is an All Powerful, Guiding, Creative Intelligence, right there our perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn't so. We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments, thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere.
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That is not a description of me as an atheist. I don't believe the universe came out of nothing, I just don't believe there is an all powerful, guiding, creative intelligence behind it. The universe and nature has always been, simply is and always will be. Nature is an evolving force I find to be be an evolving force obviously greater than I am, but not a creative intelligence. I don't believe there's an intelligence that decides it's going to be partly cloudy in England today, and a typhoon is going to hit the east coast of Japan tomorrow. Here's another passage that has me confused:
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When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.
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Maybe I'm still getting hung up on the G word, but it seems to be suggesting we have to accept the God idea as others believe in it. I don't doubt the power of God because I don't believe He exists. Another troubling passage:
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When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What was our choice to be?
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Really, it's that black and white? Say my concept of God is electricity or Nature. I don't believe electricity is everything, nor is Nature. There's also free will and the intelligence of human beings.
Then they sum up the chapter with a story of a friend who "thought he was an atheist" and eventually came to believe in God and a creator. Is this what AA ultimately suggests? That you must ultimately come to accept a creator, a maker? I've heard varying accounts, so I honestly don't know what to believe at this point. I don't want to engage in these 12 steps if I'm to find after a few of them that my conception of "God" or a "Power greater than myself" is inadequate unless I embrace the most commonly held belief in God. Or did I ultimately interpret "We Agnostics" completely different than was expected?
A little perspective needed. I welcome any lashings for asking the same questions again.
