Originally Posted by remedy4serenity
they choose to ignore, if it includes anything to do with God.
Hi Ready.
I'm an sober atheist member of AA/NA. The faith based spirituality of the BB and steps are not ignored by me, its more of a case of 'total disinterest' for me. Like the experience of
*Jimmy B, 4th original member of AA that fought to include "as we understood Him" into step 3. "Group.Of.Drunks" and "Good" along with developing a naturalist spirituality (vs a HP/G*d spirituality), has worked wonders for me and other agnostic/atheist members.
Maybe there is a "We Agnostics AA" meeting near by. You can direct those that have a different worldview to those meetings.
In AA's first years I all but ruined the whole undertaking with this sort of unconscious arrogance. God as I understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging - perhaps fatally so - to numbers of non-believers. Of course this sort of thing isn't confined to Twelfth Step work. It is very apt to leak out into our relationships with everybody. Even now, I catch myself chanting that same old barrier-building refrain, "Do as I do, believe as I do - or else!"
The Dilemma of No Faith, By Bill Wilson, AA Grapevine, April 1961
Here are some links to Agnostic/Atheist AA sites.
AA Agnostica AA Agnostics of the San Franscisco Bay Area "One's religious affiliation, or lack of it; one's philosophical preferences, or none; one's theistic, or agnostic, or atheistic, or pantheistic, or virtually any relatively held notion or concept of a power greater than ourselves, could bare no relevance on one's membership in the Fellowship of the Spirit, thanks to Jim Burwell."
-Bearfoot
A.A. History - Jimmy B. - The Aetheist - After 19 YearsFor the new agnostic or atheist just coming in, I will try to give very briefly my milestones in recovery.
1. The first power I found greater than myself was John Barleycorn.
2. The A.A. Fellowship became my Higher Power for the first two years.
3. Gradually, I came to believe that God and Good were synonymous and were found in all of us.
4. And I found that by meditating and trying to tune in on my better self for guidance and answers, I became more comfortable and steady.
”
- J.B., San Diego, California.