Posted on 08/04/2008 3:58:38 PM PDT by valkyry1
http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/freereligion/aacult
http://www.geocities.com/drugsandalcoholinfo/webpagesandpapers/insideaawebpagewebpage.htm
http://www.moonmac.com/Cult_Called_AA.html
http://www.aadeprogramming.org/reclaim/index_content_reclaim.html
http://www.aadeprogramming.org/reclaim/orange-heresy.html
http://www.bloomington.in.us/~lgthscac/alcoholicsanonymous.htm
http://www.morerevealed.com/articles/kirton.jsp
Have you found that as sobriety became a habit that it got easier to resist the urge to drink?
Then don’t go!
You know what? I'll say a prayer for you.
If people helping others stay sober and learn to live in sobriety is a cult, then I'm for it. I have seen many success stories. I have seen many failures.
It's still up to the person drinking if they want stop.
At my meetings we all say the Lord's Prayer at the end. Which "cult" is that?
Where’s my popcorn popper???
I’ve been sober in AA for nearly 18 years and I can’t help but wonder why nearly every church and synagogue goes out of it’s way to make meeting rooms available for AA if it’s a cult.
My BS Meter starts pinging with any site hosted by angelfire or geocities.
g
AA is built upon lies.
William L. Playfair, M.D.
They [the Twelve Steps] do not derive exclusively or even primarily from truths or concepts found in either the Old or New Testament. One cannot find anything even remotely similar to the Twelve Steps in the writings of ancient or modern Christian theologians. The secular nature of the Twelve Steps is, in fact, freely admitted by A.A. groups. Al-Anon, for instance, plainly asserts: The Twelve Steps . . . although spiritually oriented, are not based on a specific religious discipline. They embrace not only the philosophies of the Judeo-Christian faiths and the many religions of the East, but nonreligious, ethical and moral thought as well. . . As a matter of fact, AA’s Twelve Steps are more akin to the Bahai faith than to Biblical Christianity (William L. Playfair. The Useful Lie. Illinois: Crossway Books, 1991, p. 87).
This any power of AA and the recovery industry is really just that–any power, imagined or real. Continuing its message to the clergy, AA concedes that: Some members of the clergy may be shocked to learn that an agnostic or an atheist may join the Fellowship, or to hear an AA [member] say: “I can’t accept that ‘God concept’; I put my faith in the AA group; that’s my higher power, and it keeps me sober.” The idea of the AA group as the Higher Power or god of an AA member should not be shrugged off as hypothetical or even all that exceptional. Recovery industry literature is replete with testimonials of this kind (Playfair, The Useful Lie, supra, p. 91).
Jan R. Wilson and Judith A. Wilson:
There are many different ideas of a Higher Power. The chapter on Step Two in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions describes several types of experiences with God before getting into a recovery program. Some are what one might call a traditional idea of God and some are very nontraditional. All that seems to be required is that the Higher Power be someone or something that you can relate to that is more powerful than your addiction. . . . Some people have such negative reactions to the traditional ideas that for a while they have to think of “GOD” as Good Orderly Direction, from wherever it comes. Some even say their Higher Power was just a Group Of Drunks (Jan R. Wilson and Judith A. Wilson. Addictionary: A Primer of Recovery Terms and Concepts from Abstinence to Withdrawal. New York: A Fireside/Parkside Recovery Book, 1992, pp. 181-82).
Bill Wilson, a co-founder of AA said that the designation “God” does not refer to a particular being, force or concept, but only to “God” as each of us chooses to understand that term. In Came To Believe, a record of the individual spiritual journeys of members of Alcoholics Anonymous, not one recorded experience is Christian.
In Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, by Ernest Kurtz, it is documented that Bill Wilson was fascinated with “spiritism”, and was drawn through his friendship with philosopher-mystic Gerald Heard into the ambit of the later-life interests of humanist, Aldous Huxley. Bill Wilson experimented with occultic spiritualistic phenomena, and eventually claimed some power over them.
It is a matter of record according to Melody Beattie, author of “Beyond Codependency” that Bill Wilson’s interest in “spiritualism” was accompanied by “his experimentation with L.S.D.”
There is not one reference to the Biblical God and Father of Jesus Christ, or to Jesus Christ as the one and only Savior in the several hundred testimonials in Came To Believe. The book shows an anti-Christian bias, as every possible kind of other god and every other kind of testimony, other than Christian, is recorded.
Alcoholics Anonymous is not the effective “Wonder Cure” society has been taught to believe that it is. What AA does do, however, is to introduce those who are exposed to it, “to seek after other gods, whom they have not known...” Those who attend their meetings or read their literature, or receive their counseling are told that any god at all will do. AA teaches people to worship “god as they understand him” - or would like him to be, a god of their own making, a god created in their own image, or even the particular AA group of people with whom they meet, they are told, may serve as their “god.”
The most frightening aspect of seeking a “lesser god,” is the possibility that they will find him, or that indeed they will welcome him in, for Jesus called Satan the “god of this world,” and the “ruler of this present age” in the world’s “system,” and Satan desires worship in any deceitful form he can receive it.
If they would only turn to the “one true God,” the God of the Bible, they would find, as God promises in His Holy Word, that “with God all things are possible.” (Mark 10:27)
. . . .I have 30 years sobriety through AA...a wonderful NON cult...in fact, so many
independent people in there that a cult would be impossible.
Most people who make the cult claim are still wrestling with alcohol, drug, gambling and sex addictions, and all jacked up on misanthropic anger all day.
Bill Wilson was a madman
“I can choose any conception of God that I wish.
I can make God in my own image.
I can worship any Golden Calf that I like. It doesn’t matter.
It is only necessary that I believe whatever I wish to believe.
Upon that simple beginning, I can build a whole new theology.
Will it work? Of course it will, because I wish it to!
Oh happy day! The scales are falling from my eyes. My prejudices are gone!
I can see The Promised Land clearly now!
I am convinced that God will be concerned about me, and grant all of my wishes, because I want Him to.”
Yes, Bill Wilson was genuinely insane, and he showed us that over and over again in the Big Book and his other writings like Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Bill even became the leader of a religious cult. He’s literally a classic textbook case of 297.10 Delusional (Paranoid) Disorder, Grandiose Type.”
Simply an outright lie!
If someone comes to AA and has no concept of God then we encourage him to listen and eventually come to his own understanding of God. For people like me raised a Catholic I came to have a much better understanding of God than I ever got in 12 years of Catholic schooling.
Isn't the foundation of Christ's teachings that we are to live as if "we are the only Bible anyone will ever see"? It's same with AA. We try to live as if "we are the only Big Book a newcomer will ever see".
It's not a cult. It's called helping your fellow man.
Bill even became the leader of a religious cult.
Last drink of alchohol was September 3, 1983, must be a programmed cultist if I remember it that precisely.
Spent a lot of time in those rooms way back when.
Agreed.
The "cult," if there is one, is at the other end of these accusations.
. . .You are VERY confused. You criticize AA as if it claimed to be a religion in and of itself, and it does nothing of the kind. It’s a spiritual path to recovery open to anyone, of any faith....even religious nut cases such as yourself.
I can make God in my own image.
I can worship any Golden Calf that I like. It doesn’t matter.
It is only necessary that I believe whatever I wish to believe.
Upon that simple beginning, I can build a whole new theology.
Will it work? Of course it will, because I wish it to!
Oh happy day! The scales are falling from my eyes. My prejudices are gone!
I can see The Promised Land clearly now!
I am convinced that God will be concerned about me, and grant all of my wishes, because I want Him to.”
I don't know where you got these quotes from, but Bill Wilson DID NOT write them ANYWHERE.
... but Bill Wilson DID NOT write them ANYWHERE.
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