Thank you!

But, the beautiful thing about hitting rock bottom is that the only way to go from there is up. All of that to say that maybe (yes, I’m being optimistic) Trump is what this country needs to hit rock bottom, do some self reflection, and pull ourselves back up to a better place. The biggest takeaway I learned way back when is that no matter how bad things get, the world keeps spinning

These are unfortunately contradictory ideas. It sounds like you had a positive journey in the end, but there are many individuals - especially people struggling with addiction - who will tell you that there is no rock bottom. The world does keep on spinning. And as long as you are alive, you can go lower. There is no point where you go so low that you hit bedrock and the world stops spinning.

Plenty of people think they hit rock bottom and later discover that what they thought of as their lowest point eventually became a time they now think of as “the good days”.

There is nothing inevitable or guaranteed about hitting rock bottom and climbing your way back up. It is hard work, and it sounds like you know that personally. Whatever comes next will be a terrible struggle for all of us, and there is no guarantee of success. But we do have to try anyway.

That’s very interesting. Do you know where I could learn more about that decision? I tried searching but its 2025 and any phrases I could think of just returned websites offering nearly identical collections of flag emojis…

As much as theists would claim that their morals were handed down from divinity, ultimately an athiest would understand those morals to be originally handed down from humans, and therefore humanistic.

Doesn’t mean they’re good morals of course, especially when corrupted by motives of power, but bad morals can be handed down by secular sources as well. The point being that theistic origins do not necessarily mean the morals themselves are flawed.

In any case, fundamentally the ethics of AA’s 12 steps are technically theistic in origin and nomenclature but humanistic in nature, in that they appear to really dig down into the psychology of humans in a way that deviates significantly from their christian roots.

According to Mercadante, however, the AA concept of powerlessness over alcohol departs significantly from Oxford Group belief. In AA, the bondage of an addictive disease cannot be cured, and the Oxford Group stressed the possibility of complete victory over sin.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous

The original christian prayer group believed that through God, addiction could be cured. AA has maintained from the beginning that addiction cannot be cured - a recovering alcoholic is and always will be a recovering alcoholic. Faith in God alone will not deliver salvation because addiction is not sin, it is illness, and should be treated by more than just prayer.

They want to use military planes because they can hide the cost of this program in the “whoops it’s too big to audit” defense budget. The cost of civilian contractors would be publically disclosed.

I never said that, nor did I ever think that. But you have made clear that this discussion is unwanted, and I will respect that and say no more on it. Farewell.

Did you? To me? Where?

Please don’t feel that the best thing you can do is shut up! You deserve a voice in the matter, even if it is much harder for you to use it the way others can use theirs.

Besides, not everyone can always be or even needs to always be the person who spreads the message. We need people to help figure out what the problems and solutions are just as much as we need people to share those problems and solutions with the world.

It is usually a necessary evil that we have marketers to sell the things that wouldn’t exist without the engineers to produce them.

I already told you what I didn’t agree with and why I didn’t agree with it several times

I didn’t and still don’t see any explanations for why you disagree, other than “being athiest” which I do not believe is sufficient explanation in and of itself. There are plenty of athiests who find reasons to agree or disagree on this topic beyond that single belief.

I apologize if my approach seems insistent that you need to agree with me. I only wanted to explore the topic further, and am happy to discontinue that if the desire is not reciprocated. Farewell.

I have no idea how to interpret “improve our conscious contact with God” any other way.

… All they’re really doing is using their imagination to simulate a being greater than themselves and then asking “what would that being want for my life?”

This is a secular interpretation of “improve our conscious contact with God” that doesn’t actually involve “communicating with a God”

Is there something about this interpretation that you don’t understand or disagree with?

I have no idea how to interpret “improve our conscious contact with God” any other way.

Then you’re not experiencing any empathy for them. You’re not actively putting yourself in their perspective, their world. You’re accepting what they say, not extrapolating from that to understand what they think.

Religious people generally don’t hear voices in their head. We know God doesn’t talk to them. They know God doesn’t talk to them. They might believe in signs or whatever, but they don’t hear a voice when they pray, and they certainly don’t expect to.

From the outside perspective of an athiest, you should be able to see that all they’re really doing is using their imagination to simulate a being greater than themselves and then asking “what would that being want for my life?”

This is not very functionally different from asking ourselves “if I was a better person, what would I want for my life?”

The theistic process could be corrupted by malformed ideas about the things a deity would want, sure. But the athiestic process could also be corrupted by malformed ideas about the things a good person would want.

If the user was going to message someone off platform they’d still be sending them an unencrypted message anyways if they have to switch apps to SMS.

It sounds like they don’t want to take responsibility for that user choice or be connected to anything that happens because of that choice.

It would still be an insecure choice, even with obvious UX distinctions. It would only be a matter of time before headlines muddy the waters with “intercepted Signal messages reveal…” or “Judge rules in favor of subpeona for unencrypted Signal messages…”

I am describing its original purpose in the sense of prayer’s original purpose in psychology and sociology.

One can learn lessons from religious practices without becoming religious in the process.

Besides prayer in general, take another look at the step:

… 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.

Do you know what that is? Look at it as an athiest, and imagine what purpose that step serves.

Seeking to understood God and his will? That’s not - as many would put it - a human trying to communicate with a Sky Dad.

That’s a human trying to understand his own Coherent Extrapolated Volition: “our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence

When a human makes a gesture and a sound on cue, they’re usually engaging in in-group signalling. But when a human prays and meditates on finding God’s Will for them, they are trying to imagine their own desires and needs from the standpoint of a superior being. One with more information, a greater mind, a greater moral compass. They are trying to make themselves better by imagining the ways they could be better.

Athiests do this too, they just call it cognitive behavioral therapy and moral philosophy.

But you don’t see how it’s easy to rewrite something without losing its original purpose and value? How the step can serve the exact same psychological niche for an athiest as it does for a thiest, without actually changing the cognitive and emotional processes they need to undergo for sobriety or self-improvement?

Aside from the obvious (Trump being a dangerous radical, to put it mildly) has anything changed in the way influence is bought and sold

The world’s richest man did a nazi salute on stage, in front of at least 3 of the other richest men in the world who all showed up to support the incoming administration.

The owners of Twitter, Meta, Amazon, and most recently Tiktok with the “thanks Trump!” obvious power play have all quite openly kissed the ring and bent the knee.

This is very far off from previous years. The wealthiest of the wealthy are making public displays of loyalty to a man who has flagrantly profitted off of the office for four years straight while actively making life worse for everyone except the rich.

Now he flagrantly profitted off of the office again before he was even inaugurated by launching a cryptocurrency, and his first actions in office are all directly and obviously against the best interests of the people but custom-designed for the well-known interests of wealthy conservative idealogues.

Yes, this is new. And yes, this is very, very, bad. Was America an oligarchy playing dress-up as a democratic republic? Yes. Were there massive donors pulling strings behind the scenes? Absolutely. Were politicians and lobbyists enjoying a revolving door of public and private sector benefits and making bank on book deals? All true.

But now the masks are off, and the worst and wealthiest have taken control with a smile and a laugh. They aren’t playing the world’s biggest and stupidest game of Monopoly. They have the Commander in Chief of the Military with all the checks and balances intentionally removed, so at the very least they’re playing the world’s worst game of Risk.

They aren’t going to make money off of book deals. They will make money off of wholesale looting and dismantling the government, and they’ll blame the inevitable economic and societal problems on us, on immigrants, on un-American citizens, and they’ll do it in broad daylight on 5th avenue.

That’s bad.

But to an atheist, the lines are in no way hazy between prayer and meditation.

This is not a true statement. But if you make a simple change, it becomes true.

But to me, the lines are in no way hazy between prayer and meditation.

Don’t assume you speak for everyone. You don’t.

Feel free to explore the countless - countless - examples of mindfulness and meditation scattered throughout almost every spiritual and religious practice from western natives to eastern cultures to polytheistic pantheons to - yes- Abrahamic religions.

Bow your head, make some noise. Raise your head, make some noise. Wash your hands. Eat this meal, share it with your neighbor. Speak your gratitude for the food. Speak your gratitude for your life, for your health, for your family. Speak your gratitude for your neighbor. Wish them peace and good fortune. Sing this song. Smell this incense. Listen to this music.

Stand, and think about what you want. Speak these desires to yourself, to your leader, to the universe. Sit, and listen to the sound of nothing. Kneel, and think about what you need. Speak these needs out loud. Share them with your neighbors. Hear their needs. Bear your burdens together.

Too many people think religion is nothing more than a plague. In truth it is nothing more than a tool. Yes, one that was and is often used for great evil. But still just a tool.

Modern spiritualism, neurology, philosophy, psychology - they all point toward the conclusion that religion in all its forms served a number of useful purposes for the development of the human community and the maintenance of the human psyche. It’s not necessary, nor is it always good. In fact in the modern day it’s often bad.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it was probably an inevitable part of apes climbing down from the trees, and it’s not hard to imagine why people still find a use for it.

Step 11 makes sense if you understand that it is about meditation and mindfulness.

An athiest and a thiest can benefit from the exact same cognitive and emotional processes and walk away with a completely different understanding of why it works.

An athiest can practice mindfulness, self-awareness, and meditation, with or without external guidance, and walk away feeling better and more capable of managing their mental and emotional labors. They often do so with the belief that meditation helps clear their mind, center their existence, or rebalances their neurochemistry.

A thiest can practice mindfulness, self-awareness, and meditation, with or without external guidance, and walk away feeling better and more capable of managing their mental and emotional labors. They often do so with the belief that meditation helps align their thoughts with God’s, centers their existence, or rebalances the burdens on their immortal soul.

Both an athiest and a thiest can use repetitive mantras, sensory cues (music, incense, etc), instructors, calls-and-responses, group and individual sessions, etc.

Humans often reinvent the wheel a thousand times over and call it something new. The lines are hazy between prayer and meditation, between sermon and self-affirmation, between faith and zen.

With advanced neuroscience and psychology, we can rediscover things that were pretty obvious in hindsight: humans feel better when they surround themselves with a supportive social structure where they feel safe. These support structures are easily built around displays of community cohesion - where everyone knows the same lines, the same songs, the same cues to sit up, sit down, bow your head, kneel forward. The same cues to slide to the left, slide to the right, criss cross, clap your hands. Humans like to move as one, and speak as one, because when they do, they feel as one. They feel better when they feel connected. And they often feel better when they meditate and clear their mind, allowing a private or shared experience to take their thoughts away.

Now, in the modern day, you can take those ideas and run away with it. You can build communities that feel safe because they are safe, not because they feel safe from an artifically constructed common ground. You can play music and go to therapy. You can speak to a doctor and spend time with friends. You can find people with which you can sit in a circle and talk openly about your problems. It often helps if you find people who share those same problems.

Don’t do the easy thing, and let athiesm be the thing that divides you from your fellow humans. Do the hard thing, and try to find the things that connect you. You’re more alike than you think.

From a quick ddg -

AA Version: 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.

Practical Version: We started meditating.

Throughout this process, you’ll discover – if you haven’t already – that none of these steps exists in a vacuum. They all impact each other and are impacted by the others. This is particularly true for step eleven. The ultimate goal of this step is to engage regularly in the practice of mindfulness, which has been demonstrated time and again to benefit multiple areas of one’s mental health. Being mindful means being consciously aware of something (usually breath, bodily sensations, or thoughts) without judgment or resistance. The best way to practice this is through meditation, but it can be practiced throughout the day as well. I recommend utilizing both for optimal results.

Source: https://aaagnostica.org/2020/03/29/staying-sober-without-god-practical-step-eleven/

You don’t have to substitute “God” directly in the steps to make them work for you. There are plenty of ways to use the ideas of the program without being limited by its theistic roots.

Of course AA works because it serves as group therapy. That should be fairly obvious to anyone who’s ever heard of the concept. But the most important step in any therapeutic approach is acknowledging hard truths. That is the most important part of AA, as well.

Half the steps are devoted to honestly acknowledging our flaws and mistakes, owning them, addressing them, and making amends wherever possible. That is what these pardon refusers did here, and the world would be a better place if more people had their courage.

It isn’t by necessity a religious program, though I freely acknowledge its theistic roots, and the fact that many are religious and do rely on deity as higher power.

But the reason these people were capable of this bravery is stated in the article and is specifically not their piety - it’s their honesty.

“Step 4: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”

“Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

The most important lesson to be learned in AA has nothing to do with God and everything to do with addressing falsehoods - the lies people tell themselves and others to justify their behavior and to excuse their actions.

Through time, habit, and conscious effort and will, these people have primed their minds to be willing to accept a fundamentally difficult truth - that what we think and what we feel can be false. That the things we tell ourselves, the things we tell others, and the things we do can all be wrong.

We all have a responsibility to face those truths with courage and transparency. We have a responsibility to own our flaws and mistakes and make amends where possible. That is the guiding truth of AA. It all started with God, but it ends with the individual, and how they face those truths.

Then you’re not actually advocating for change. If you have no interest in changing minds then you have no interest in any meaningful difference in the future. Besides, the consent has been manufactured and the horses have been lead to a poisoned pool.

The apathetic dismissal of people as helpless - the belief that they are, individually and as a whole, incapable of change or redemption or worse, unworthy of it - is a small but meaningful part of the machine that has altered reality in front of our very eyes.

We appear to be in one of many pivotal moments in history, where economics and politics and technology all tip the dominoes that are human lives toward an entirely new and irreversible state.

Hard times tend to meet demagogues and easy answers, but they also tend to force people to come together and face hard truths. I’m not saying you personally can save or change them all - perhaps not even save any. But there are plenty of good, ignorant people that will have opportunities to learn some terrible lessons very soon.