Argh! You see I just can't keep coming back to this ;-) It's a lifeline I guess. I am struggling 1) to try and stay sober, and 2) to try and make sense of what some people are telling me. I am trying to listen because if someone tells me 'do this' and you can be sober then obviously my ears prick up (?!) but then I start to think ... wait a minute, am I prepared to do ANYTHING, believe ANYTHING to be sober? Well ... for those who are offended by any questions on God please tune out ;-)

There is SO much talk of God on this site. It's worries me rather than offends me. I look at what is being discussed here and then think about all the terror/territorialisatoin going on around the planet. You may all laugh but actually I am quite an emotion driven/'spiritual' person - but for me that is to live and to feel things subjectively and to on the occasion experience the wonderful sublimity of nature. Nature that has taken billions of year to form, slowly taking step by step, evolving, mutating.

I was watching the God Delusion again last night to try and focus myself as I think it poses very interesting questions (and fails to ask some as well about our NEED for spirituality). It gets me thinking about lots of other stuff I have read and stuff I have written myself. It's very easy when you feel this fragile and vulnerable to give up and just let someone else do the thinking for you. Many cults I guess have used that to their advantage.

Do you know in the US now 45% believe in a God? You drive through Colorado/Middle America and you can take your pick of new churches/new gods/new pastors to follow and tell you what to do. Why are so many people turning to God? Is it laziness? Do people really just want to be told what to do? Are our lives so lacking in genuine interest and feeling?

But religion and GOD, is mythology. People's beliefs are not bases on evidence, and before I get fired down ... I mean evidence you can demonstrate rather than some subjective feeling/emotion/intuition.

Why does this matter to me SO much to me? Why don't I just want to give up and say 'yeah, God is whatever you want her to be/whatever your conception is of her'? Firstly, because reality is just not like that. We may all have to experience, as humans, reality in a certain way (I mean in time/space type stuff). It's interesting that people talk about all the crazy things they though under the influence alcohol or whatever, and yet they are prepared when sober to believe/think something that has no evidential basis whatever other than what someone else told them to believe. Secondly, and more worryingly, because beliefs that are not based on evidence but tradition/myth are always subject to conflicts because if God is whatever you conceive it to be then we end up with lots of versions. And it would be nice to think that humans are noble/intelligent enough but look around you. Look at Jerusalem - which holds at least 3 different groups of people with different Gods. Oh yeah, they get on just fine. Because they all hold false beliefs, and because they equally think that they are RIGHT. But of course there is never and will never be any way to demonstrate who is right. So they all just keep on passing the same old lies and propaganda to their children, to the needy and vulnerable, to those who feel a void that needs filled up.

It could be argued that AA talks about a God (or HP) of no church, and that is certainly professed. And they are only using a concept of God to recovery and live and stay sober. But why call it God then when this concept has so many historical and religious baggage? When we talk of God, there may be differences in the detail, but what we mean is an omnipotent, omniscient being (normally male but sometimes not) who commands and controls us and can, if need be, also condemn us. If it ISN'T that, then it's normally something else so vague and subjective that it can't even be identified. In other words, if you talk about God, most people will know roughly what you MEAN.

So I thought I would just try and justify my atheistic view point since it seems to offend some people and that was not the intention. It was not a knee jerk reaction to piss people off. It is a thought out position I think and thoughts I had also before I drank alcoholically and also shared with people who are not alcoholic so most definately not the 'disease' talking. It is my most difficult problem with AA and why I have found it difficult to start out on the steps. I find it difficult to listen to people talk about God so flippantly when it is precisely this unfounded IDEA that has led to so much hatred around the world. If you think talking of God is innocent, how did you feel when the two towers were bombed by terrorists, terrrorists who had as much conviction in Their God as you do in yours, probably people who were maybe even as vulnerable to lies as some of us are. Thy will be done? It may be an extreme example of what happens when you hand over your will to a higher power, but you do what your God tells you right? It makes me frightened, sad, and sometimes very angry.

Lastly, Bertrand Russell gave an interesting example to show how silly it really was to call people atheists. Imagine that a few nutters talking about a giant teapot in the sky that was undetectable. It was in fact 'disprovable' as there could never be an opposite proof. But we wouldn't go around talking about 'teapot atheists', that would be ridiculous, just like we don't go around talking about 'fairy atheists' or 'munchkin atheists'!! It's only in the context of lots of people believing in the giant teapot theory, where lots of books and important men and institutions and governments and educational systems all keep perpetuating the giant teapot and handing the myth of the teapot down generation after generation that it becomes at last possible to talk of 'teapot atheists'. I believe in middle America there exists a few groups of teapot, sorry 'God atheists' who are being hounded by creationists and driven out of educational posts, sometimes by high school students trained in cult camps to questions biology teachers on the issue of evolution. There exists a musuem 'based' on the myth of creationism i.e. that the universe was created in 7 or whatever the **** days and has only existed for 10 thousand years.

My point is: if you talk of GOD you are engaging with all what is going around with religion around the world. If you are, and you are talking of something completely different, then maybe you shouldn't use the word God. Maybe you should just talk of personal feeling/empowerment.

In relation to the group and how some of us can move forward if we have problems with the myth of God, then it's POSTITIVE and enlightening and motivating that Some people who have gone to AA/or whatever and have achieved sobriety. Yay! For me of course they may THINK that they have done it with God, but of course there is absolutely no reason to think that is the case. Which leaves one explanation: that they did it by themselves with or without friends/group support. And that give me a lot of hope! I just want to tap into that sense of empowerment without the lies!

Sorry, I've ranted on. But hey we get a lot from the other view point, please don't give me a hard time for putting across this 'teapot atheist' one ;-) Good luck everyone - we CAN do this! x