This is a common argument against the program’s lack of proven efficacy and demonstrates a misunderstanding of what is involved in conducting a well run study. Anonymity is a key feature of double-blinded studies.

Again, as I believe I mention in the post…or rather, it is meant to be the point of the post…that arguments like the ones you present aren’t any different than the arguments used to try and defend any other pseudoscientific treatment–whether it be acupuncture, homeopathy, reiki, or faith healing (AA is simply a popular form of faith healing). These treatments simply do not have proven efficacy, lack plausibility, and do not follow any standards of evidence-based medicine.

My name is ____________ and I’m an atheist.

I am addressing this to the alcoholics who have had trouble with the religious overtones in the AA program. To those who do not accept the idea of a supernatural being, let me assert that it is always people who have strengthened me when I needed help.

I have a deep belief in human morality. I believe that evil impulses can be subordinated by decent actions. AA brings out impulses for good, and this has tremendous force. In my opinion, this sum total of good actions is the “higher power.”

In the words of a Unitarian minister: “In a world that has lost, or is losing fast, any convincing concept of divine providence at work, of a personal God ordering the affairs of humanity, it is not necessary to assume that the only alternative to a human-cherishing universe is a hostile or satanic universe. There is the much more likely alternative of a neutral universe where people live, hammering out salvation without hope of heaven or dread of hell. People can find that life has value, not because a divine being so ordains, but because the achievements of good men and women, laboring together with love and self-respect, are self-validating and self-rewarding.”

I was not able to accept AA or the very real help it could give until I made a rationalistic interpretation of the program. I am still an atheist, but I am a grateful atheist.

I don’t want to change AA It works for me. I just want it to be effective in attracting rationalists. Their membership will help AA tremendously.

The contrast of this purpose in AA dogma is clear in so many ways.And please let me be brief and to the point as the issues are complex and deserving of much greater discourse.

First who is Bill Wilson anyway?Listen Moses and Charlie Manson both spoke to God? What higher power or powers did they talk to? By the way there is growing evidence God(s) are women anyway.

The Big Book…often treated as the third testament. So poorly written and illogically connected with incongruent anecdotes that it severes any relationship with the science of statistical study.In so doing defies the inate common senses and reasonings of the human mind.

To add,this is not the first time such programming has been used in recent history. Turn to Nazi Germany and the comparisons are irrefutable.
Repeat the lie again again and again and it becomes the truth.Millions of Germans can attest to the evil power of this method.

Oh yea, Robert S MacNamara knew it too just ask 62,000 American boys

As I greatly admire the wisdom of the founding fathers of America in building the three cornerstone documents of a great nation.They understood the future would unfold in many ways and its constitution would need to be amended to account for new realities and the democratic will of”we the people” This humble sense gave the nation the opportunity to mature and grow wiser in time.Arrogance in thinking lost to the understanding of the limits of our judgements in a moment of time.

AA has no constitution that allows for the adjustment needed in current or future realities. Born in its axiomatic 12 steps and traditions dooms AA to a DARWINIAN failure. History shows that creatures,entities and nations that fail to adapt meet a certain demise. The arrogance of the so-called founders of AA planted the seeds of its demise at its birth.

This in turn leads to one of the most insane hypothesis of their program.I will not bother with mathematical perspective here albeit one could have some fun overlaying algebra on the 12 steps. Rather let us examine the hypothesis ” there are 12 steps to recovery”

First what is so magical about the number 12? How do we know there are not 16,23 or 45? The answer is there is no emphirical support for any number nor deductive scientific reasoning for 12 or less or more.We also all must be fools to believe that in 75 years no new steps have been found. To say they got it all right on the first go around redefines two words. Stupidity and arrogance.

They forgot that you cannot fool all the people all of the time.Has a ring to it…

Without much effort it is easy to imagine adding steps involving,nutrition,fitness,cognitive behavior and community work and so on. Also maybe the most important step would be to contribute and raise funds to cure the Disease. Much work in genetics and micro neuro bioligy is being done.Lets direct our resources to using the powerful tools of medical science to find a cure for this disease.

Many other ailments have greater medical resources allocated to them. But the costs of this disease are perhaps exponential in cost and impact on the human condition compared to all others. AFTER 75 YEARS it is time for western medicine to seriously attack one the greatest costs to our society. To deny this is to deny existence itself.

Yet it will take more than medicine alone as broader interests and hard legislation and enforcement are needed. OUR culture must change and AA dogma must open its structure to reality if it desires to help.

For in the last analysis the real and only true purpose of AA is to go out of business.In that 100 years from today its success will be based on having no members.For this is the true torch that the spirits of the universe and humanity pass on to us.The challenge in holding this torch reaches for beyond the words of denial

IT IS TIME FOR A CURE and to those who say it cannot be done we should only ask why not? For we do look at things the way are and ask why. Again we just ask why not?

The torch has been passed.