IGX

GBM,

I hear you and in fairness, one of the main guys who took interest in me at AA always said I was "working the program" eventhough I wasn't working the program. Like spending 3 hours tracking down my buddy during a work day who went off on a binge.....that kind of thing.

My only point about AA as it pertains to this thread, is my comment to Koko about the higher power who can help you, thing. You have to believe that is true otherwise you're not 12 steppin' per se. #'s 2,3,7,11 & 12 would all "require" that belief. NTTAWWT. #4 of course, is probably one that any and all adults should do and I think that is where BD's posts as well as one of the better things I can say about IGx over the years, resonates most.

Most people would benefit from believing in higher power, alcoholic or not. Instead of believing I would say realising, but that would be imposing. Science has discovered massive limitations of free will already few decades ago, so relying on it to get away from addiction does not make much sense.

Smet wrote:Most people would benefit from believing in higher power, alcoholic or not. Instead of believing I would say realising, but that would be imposing..

Why.

The Ginger Beard Man wrote:Oh, yeah. I don't think anyone smokes inside AA meetings anymore.

Expressly prohibited in all the meetings I've ever been to.

Outside meetings, yes. Inside, no.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Smet wrote:Most people would benefit from believing in higher power, alcoholic or not. Instead of believing I would say realising, but that would be imposing..

Why.

Not everyone agrees that this higher power exists. Impossible to prove - or disprove.

To think of it, contemporary humans are extremely arrogant creatures. A lot of us think science is the answer to everything. I think science is another kind of tyranny, opposite to that of the Church. The truth must be somewhere in the middle. As in the Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance, two sides of life, technical and romantic. Inseparable from each other.

Smet wrote: Not everyone agrees that this higher power exists. Impossible to prove - or disprove. To think of it, contemporary humans are extremely arrogant creatures. A lot of us think science is the answer to everything. I think science is another kind of tyranny, opposite to that of the Church. The truth must be somewhere in the middle. As in the Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance, two sides of life, technical and romantic. Inseparable from each other.

Yes, very arrogant creatures. Some humble middle is the right place IMO.

That "most people would benefit from belief in a higher..." Is one of the most unscientific anti thought ridiculous propositions I can imagine.

Some people believe that they benefit from some "belief. Whether they benefit in actuality from that belief is neither verifiable or even knowable. The best you can say Is that some people seem to derive benefit from the behaviours associated with that belief. Anything more is ridiculous conjecture.

The best you can say Is that some people seem to derive benefit from the behaviours associated with that belief. Anything more is ridiculous conjecture.

But that does have persuasive power, no? It is a variation on Pascal's Wager. If there are positive effects (defined however) why not believe?

That isn't anti-thought or unscientific. To the contrary, if the benefit can be shown (no matter how slight), the reasonable action is to believe (if belief can be willed).

The thing is, non-belief (willful or not) in a "higher Power" is quite literally anti-thought and anti-science.

"Thought" and "Science" only have meaning in the presence of a "HIgher Power" as Aristotle and Aquinas were laid out...

Thought and Science require both a Cosmos (independent material world) and Logos (independent mental world) and a connection and parallelism between the two...

Without a Prime Mover or Efficient Cause the above is impossible.

Fuck off with that nonsense.

Finding no credible evidence for a "conscious higher power"... (Cause let's face it, everything from the ocean to photosynthesis is a more powerful power....) is not the same as belief or anti-thought at all. It's ambivelence about things which do not matter or are irrelevant to our whole experience.

The Five Ways of Aquinas

http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/c ... quinas.htm

What Aquinas does, is ASSUME that there is a Cosmos and a Logos and based on that assumption he shows that there has to be a THEOS or Diety or God.

By Thought and Science you mean the existence of a Cosmos and Logos and a relation between the two. Therefore, lurking at the bottom of your worldview (conscious or not) is the assumption that there is a Theos/Diety/God that has the 5 natures laid out by Aquinas. Anyone who purports "meaning" to the world or one who "does science" is a theist.

NOTE: Aquinas' 5 Ways do not compel belief in Christianity let alone Catholicism or Protestantism. It proves as Kraftt says a "very narrow slice" of God.

Seriously. You can dredge philosophical rubbish into this thread all day. Whether there's a god or not (there's probably not)...there's no point in the discussion. We're talking about whether "belief" in an actively involved deity confers some benefit to the addict. There's nothing measureable or useful to say on the subject.

Fuck off.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:We're talking about whether "belief" in an actively involved deity confers some benefit to the addict.

I know quite a few people who got clean in part because of a religious experience and/or using the support structure that often comes with it. I'm guessing that you know a few too.

Will that convince you to believe, or give you proof that God exists? No.

I know plenty of people who have had "life changing" psychotropic experiences, some of them related to a religious experience, others related to a peak physical event, others relates to ingestion of consciousness altering chemicals. Whether these experiences were endogenous like the first two or exogenous like the third is somewhat irrelevant to precription for the continuous belief in a persoanlly interested deity, which Smet is somehow projecting as a universal net benefit. Hogwash.

The behaviors associated with dedicated belief in a deity can benefit some, the support that comes form a common cause, the peer pressure etc...these can be "good"..They can also cause extreme hardship and horror for others. As a broad based prescription it's a crap idea..especially for someone who feels they lack control. AA's success is largely in spite of its religious overtones.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:That "most people would benefit from belief in a higher..." Is one of the most unscientific anti thought ridiculous propositions I can imagine.

It was intended to be. Not anti- but rather non-. In certain areas both science and thought are pretty useless, especially when it comes to most important things. Half hour of meditation a day (though for quite a long time) - the exercise of quieting down thought process - is likely to provide more understanding the meaning of life, than all sciences combined. And this understanding will be impossible to convey to anybody else, just like you cannot explain the taste of an apple to someone who never tasted it before. Neither will it be measurable by the most sophisticated instruments.

For one reality we can observe there are 10^10^16 parallel universes, which have been, incidentally, demonstrated by rigorous scientific experiments and theories. Things we cannot see that affect events in our reality, as in photon slit experiment. In other words we have a partial understanding of one 10^10^16th of the world around us. Is it physics that moves those photons? Or is it consciousness? Mind you, the glorious science has not a slightest clue of what consciousness is, but you're welcome to disprove my question.

Yeah, sure, people will benefit from displaying, which comes from believing - or not, which will make others to display or believe or whatever. This sort of discourses exists for its own sake, leading nowhere.

The fuck do parallel dimensions have to do with anything?

Jesus you fuckers will grasp at anything you don't understand (Quantum Physics) to justify another thing you don;t understand (sky pixy).

Most people don't want to believe the truth~they want the truth to be what they believe.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:Jesus you fuckers will grasp at anything you don't understand (Quantum Physics) to justify another thing you don;t understand (sky pixy).

So euphoric

Swamp Fox wrote:Most people don't want to believe the truth~they want the truth to be what they believe.

How do you know what the truth is?

Truth? What truth? Only truth I know is wife won't be home until 11 and I have a full contingent of whiskey to see me through until then. Canadian Club because I'm a cheap bastard and I like it.

Smet wrote:

Swamp Fox wrote:Most people don't want to believe the truth~they want the truth to be what they believe.

How do you know what the truth is?

You Test it....

I worry that you are practicing medicine without understanding this.

Look dude. You can't have it both ways. You can't deny the sky pixie and be a scientist or deploy logical categories. There is a reason why the Buddhists are the atheists favorite. It's because they are atheists. And they honestly deny all your science. They call it maya or illusion. They explicitly state that all your science and all your logic and all the patterns and rationality you see is false, an illusion. That is what an atheist has to believe. If you believe in science and the logical categories you at bottom believe in the sky pixie. Who created science and the categories? Aristotle. And Aristotle got that if all the shit around us and in our heads makes sense, there has to be a prime mover and efficient cause. No other option. If you deny the sky pixie you deny science and logic and cause and effect etc.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Smet wrote:

Swamp Fox wrote:Most people don't want to believe the truth~they want the truth to be what they believe.

How do you know what the truth is?

You Test it....

I worry that you are practicing medicine without understanding this.

Medicine is a science and an art. Science part can be tested (to some extent). Art requires more than that. Can you come up with the scientific methodology of creating music?