Comment by IlikeKitties
1 day ago
> There is no pressure to have your higher power named "God". It could be anything; the point is to have a power higher than the one over you (the addiction).
The rejection of any "higher power" is precisely what being an atheist is for a lot of us. Accepting that we are just the result of random thermodynamic processes in a cold and uncaring universe that provides no evidence that there is any form of "higher power" than uncaring entropy could very well be the definition of modern atheism.
> Accepting that we are just the result of random thermodynamic processes in a cold and uncaring universe that provides no evidence that there is any form of "higher power" than uncaring entropy could very well be the definition of modern atheism.
and then your further rejection of the response:
> The person I am talking about chose their child's well-being and safety as their "higher power".
i understand you see the universe as uncaring, but there is care right in front of you. i hope the sunshine breaks through and you find it, too.
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There are perfectly rational things that qualify as higher powers even if one doesn’t have religious belief. Those vast physical laws, the trajectory of the universe, the grand story of humanity, our quests for understanding.
Rejecting religion doesn’t mean rejecting wonder, and doesn’t make it too much harder to find something more significant than myself.
You will find AA chapters with religious overtones, and you will find many more that take those steps to set perspective about things bigger than you and beyond your complete understanding.
> The rejection of any "higher power" is precisely what being an atheist is for a lot of us.
The person I am talking about chose their child's well-being and safety as their "higher power".
The higher power has nothing at all to do with religion unless you want it to.
I looked it up, there's not a dictionary I can find that would define "higher power" as your friend did. Words have meaning, you know?
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/higher-power https://www.dictionary.com/browse/higher-power https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/higher%20power
And it's beside the point anyways because again, look at the 12 Steps, quoted directly from their website, as a canonical source [0]:
> 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
> 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
> 7. Humbly asked Him [God] to remove our shortcomings.
> 11. 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.
If your argument is that to stop alcohol addiction you need to stop using alcohol and most of the 12 Step Program is irrelevant nonsense, than we are in agreement. But they don't talk about "higher power" they literally talk about God (And they obviously don't mean Xenu here) in the majority of their steps. [0]https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps
> I looked it up, there's not a dictionary I can find that would define "higher power" as your friend did. Words have meaning, you know?
Meaning has context. If you're searching dictionaries for multi-word phrases that are specific to a certain context, you're not going to find the right answer.
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You're missing the point: as an addict the substance is the "higher power" because it literally has power over the addict.
Switching out the addiction for a different "higher power" is the point.
Just because you don't know how how things work doesn't mean you should quote the dictionary inaccurately at people. What you are doing is lower-cognitive effort than a stochastic parrot.
FWIW, I've been atheist all my life, mentioned it multiple times on HN, and am constantly annoyed by militant atheists like you making the rest of us in this group of logical people look bad.
At the very least, at least pretend to have put some thought into your worldview. Or at least pretend that there is some logic behind this argument you want to have on the internet for worthless internet points.
I'm simply telling you what the reality is. Your complaint that reality is wrong and you are right is a common but frankly stupid PoV.
There is no need to look it up. The site addresses this specific question.
https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/for-atheists-and-agnost...
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>I looked it up, there's not a dictionary I can find that would define "higher power" as your friend did. Words have meaning, you know?
Absolute premium pedantry, I rate it 10/10, 5/7 with rice
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Sounds like those thermodynamics processes are your higher power then? You're overthinking it.
Overthinking is the higher power.
> The rejection of any "higher power" is precisely what being an atheist is for a lot of us. Accepting that we are just the result of random thermodynamic processes in a cold and uncaring universe
I’m somewhere between atheist and agnostic. My mental model is a bit different. While I don’t believe there is a god or some “divine entity”, I do see “the stuff of primordial existence” as some kind of “higher power” to the extent that I’m a product of it, and its laws — discovered and yet to be discovered — govern my existence. Not some anthropomorphic entity.
Put another way, those thermodynamic processes and whatever factors of existence that enable/govern them are the “higher power”, and I don’t think that is incompatible with atheism.
> between atheist and agnostic
Sounds like you're both. They're complimentary labels. It's also possible to be an agnostic theist.
Then your higher power is logic and reason, and the question:
"Why are you doing this?" Give it the old 5-whys.
Your thermodynamic gubbins know how to enjoy the entropy while they're temporarily in this configuration without booze too.
Or just die in pain when your liver gives in, all good options.
> uncaring entropy
So then if you were to consider a higher power in that case it could be the set of all permutations of stochastic possibilities in the universe, or something like that. The system itself is powerful, and is "higher" than the individual.
Isn't atheism a rather big umbrella term? There's things all the way from secular humanism to agnostic atheism to new atheism to nihilism. There's many atheists who find purpose in a higher calling, such as taking care of the poor, or wonderment of the universe. Would those not be considered a "higher power"?
EDIT: one more thought: you can even think of a higher power as emergent behavior of individual parts.
the rejection of a higher power is insane - how do you rationalize anything coming into being? How do you rationalize there being a world at all in the first place?
A higher power isn't a man in the sky building the world in 7 days. A higher power is admitting that you do not know reality, that we are barely more intelligent than a monkey, and that the universe is much vaster and more mystical than what can be defined in a physics textbook.
> the rejection of a higher power is insane - how do you rationalize anything coming into being? How do you rationalize there being a world at all in the first place?
How do you rationalize the high power coming to being? How do you rationalize there being a higher power at all in the first place?
> how do you rationalize anything coming into being?
Why does it need to be rationalized at all? I don't need a rationalization for existing - beings arise, exist, change, and then they cease. The world's current existence isn't something that requires external justification, it just simply is.
I guess you could say the higher power to me would just be the continuous process that leads to existence and ceasing to exist - but to me it has no meaning, and no "power" other than simply being the way things are as I experience them.