Something interesting maybe none or few you will likely experience: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous meetings, presumably any 12-step meeting.
Say what you will about the 12 steps, and the belief of god that is associated with them. Feel free to disagree with the dogma. As a member I openly do that from time to time.
The real beauty of these meetings is that when someone speaks, they are left to speak completely uninterrupted. (Some groups use a timer and people generally wrap it up when the timer goes off.) Speaking about your experience during a meeting is called “sharing” and it is fucking magical. It’s helped me learn to listen, it’s helped me to speak extemporaneously on things that matter to me deeply, it’s taught me patience as an object lesson. You may not agree with what the other person is saying - there is no rule that you have to, and as might be expected it is not at all an infrequent thing that you hear absolute nonsense or worse. But there are also messages of beauty, there is often identification, there is definitely learning, and there is freedom, and there is genuine respect.
I believe there is some significant power in the 12 steps: confession of harms caused, attempts at restitution where at all appropriate, and learning to take responsibility for one’s actions. I do not believe in an all powerful and loving god because there is simply too much needless suffering in the world for me to agree with it. Occasionally I share about this but I try not to harp on it.
But the real beauty of a 12 step meeting is in the sharing, in my opinion…
This reminds me of the Infinite Jest bits about Boston AA. David Foster Wallace portrays these as some form of radical honesty and radical acceptance...with the possible exceptions of justifications, excuses, or dishonesty, which get met with concern.
For what it's worth, the notion that God controls everything isn't something that I have ever seen reflected in the Bible. In the Bible, God directly intervenes at specific instances, and there are patterns to the circumstances around those.
I realize this isn't the more common popular take, but I believe the characterization that you're using projects God as some type of puppet master who's going around giving people cancer, making people rich, etc. I have simply never seen it reflected in any part of the Bible and because of that, I think the notion is a bit dangerous.
God changed my life when I was at an absolutely low point after 2 years dealing with something that I finally had to admit I could not control about myself. I asked for His help when I had exhausted everything that I, as a man, could do to overcome it myself. And He fixed me as easily as flipping a light switch in a way that left me with absolutely no doubt.
To this day I wonder if I had to get to a point where I had to put aside my pride to realize I couldn't do it on my own.
the idea that we have perfect free will already is silly, so much of who we are and what we are allowed to do is environmental or due to circumstance. who cares if some magic dude makes people not want to murder kids when circumstance already makes a bunch of simple things like choosing to be an artist as a career impossible?
Also, since artists exist, it is possible to choose an artistic career. It's just not possible to guarantee that it would give you any comforts in life besides art.
i mean feel free to attack the example while letting the idea escape, anyone with 5 minutes could come up with a hundred professions where circumstance is the only prerequisite.
How much could the opportunities for the exercise of free will have been expanded through the application of modest constraints on it in relatively few cases?
Not even God can have omniscience, omnipotence, an unwavering commitment to free will, and an intimate concern for the wellbeing of individuals, without compromise. Personally, it's the tendentiousness of the arguments made to reconcile this conflict, not some logical flaw, that renders me skeptical, as they can be debated endlessly without resolution.
I do sometimes think about what a "good" socialist dictator would be like - and I'm aware there's been quite a few. But things like 'forced' socialism like capping health care prices or nationalizing health care, making rich people pay more taxes to lift up the poor (economic leveling), making politicians live as the poorest people they rule over for a few months.
Or things like limiting free speech; I like to think the world would be a better place if nazis, the KKK and the Confederation, their offshoots, teachings and their symbolisms were banned altogether. No tolerance for intolerance, and stuff.
I mean yeah, this line of thinking is dangerous, and the political left-right spectrum is more like a horseshoe, and I'm no political philosophist or anything. But as we are now, the right-wing is leaning heavily towards totalitarianism, to the point of wanting to abolish 'bad' law enforcement (like the FBI and IRS) in favor of their own cronies (the SS?), and disregarding the constitution and other laws while it suits them.
Assuming otherwise precipitates a collapse of the world to meaninglessness. There is too much intelligibility in the world for me to reconcile with that.
>I do not believe in an all powerful and loving god
Correct me if I'm wrong, but AA just requires you to believe in some kind of higher power, does it not? Saint Anselm's interpretation of God is not required. I don't know if you could stretch it all the way to Einstein's God, but you could probably get away with Zeus.
The way I was taught in the program: a higher power can be anything that you have the ability to believe can help you.
For many atheists and agnostics, that higher power becomes their particular 12 step group. Not the program as a whole, but literally the collective wisdom of the people they fellowship with. It could also be a door knob, if you can bring yourself to believe in the power of the door knob.
The logic is fairly straightforward:
1. Recognize that your best thinking got you here. If you were wise enough to fix it yourself, you wouldn't be in a program.
2. Since you can't fix it yourself, you have to develop faith that SOMETHING other than you can fix it.
3. This is easiest if you believe in a religious deity, since once you assume there is an all-powerful being who loves you, it's not a stretch to think that deity could give you the strength, courage, and wisdom needed to persevere. But it also works if you can simply believe that the group (or even your sponsor) is better able to guide you than you are able to guide yourself.
At least that's how I understood it and found it worked for me.
Something interesting maybe none or few you will likely experience: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous meetings, presumably any 12-step meeting.
Say what you will about the 12 steps, and the belief of god that is associated with them. Feel free to disagree with the dogma. As a member I openly do that from time to time.
The real beauty of these meetings is that when someone speaks, they are left to speak completely uninterrupted. (Some groups use a timer and people generally wrap it up when the timer goes off.) Speaking about your experience during a meeting is called “sharing” and it is fucking magical. It’s helped me learn to listen, it’s helped me to speak extemporaneously on things that matter to me deeply, it’s taught me patience as an object lesson. You may not agree with what the other person is saying - there is no rule that you have to, and as might be expected it is not at all an infrequent thing that you hear absolute nonsense or worse. But there are also messages of beauty, there is often identification, there is definitely learning, and there is freedom, and there is genuine respect.
I believe there is some significant power in the 12 steps: confession of harms caused, attempts at restitution where at all appropriate, and learning to take responsibility for one’s actions. I do not believe in an all powerful and loving god because there is simply too much needless suffering in the world for me to agree with it. Occasionally I share about this but I try not to harp on it.
But the real beauty of a 12 step meeting is in the sharing, in my opinion…