Addiction and Atheism

I found this story on CNN’s Belief Blog, I would like to thank Andrew Hall at Laughing in Purgatory for having an article on his blog that allowed me to discover the CNN blog.

The story was written by an atheist and talks a lot about her experience with AA while being an atheist, I think the part that really shined through the article is the way she describes the initial reactions from people in the groups;

“I told them I believed in math. Chaos, I said. Infinity. That sort of thing.

They looked at me in despair.

And not infrequently, they said, “So you think you’re the biggest, most important thing in the universe?””

A lot of religious folk would say that atheists think that they are the center of the universe, especially here in Texas. What they fail to realize is that by believing in Math, we are saying that we shouldn’t exist, but by that mathematical fluke we exist. We are easily out shined by the other millions of flukes that surround our lives, some of which can be awe inspiring. As someone who has been around alcoholics for a portion of my life, not all of it though, I have seen the two sided coin to AA and even NA, I personally do not support the idea of replacing one addiction with another as shown below.

“And this can be something of a sticking point when you’re sitting in a meeting room, desperate for almost any route out of hell, and someone cites “the blood of Jesus” as the only way to go. Or when you realize that six of AA's 12 steps explicitly refer to God, a Higher Power or He.”

I think that everyone can learn moderation it just takes discipline. I know because I have had my periods of time where I wasn’t all there and it took a long time for me to learn that balance. This article has shown though that the perceptions that the religious right tends to have of us are very incorrect and tend to be the opposite of what we believe. I don’t believe you need a higher power to quit any addiction, all you need is someone worth doing it for. The link for the article is below, and as always please leave your comments below and let me know your take on the article.

My Faithlessness: The atheist way through AA