After nearly four years in AA, I finally devised a concept of "higher power" that doesn't involve a deity, the group, the "fellowship", nature, the cosmos, the laws of physics, or any other person.



As a committed atheist since the age of 4, I have always known that things were "up to me", and that I could not/would not get help from some power that was "higher" or "greater" than myself.



So one day, in a meeting, while someone was discussing his higher power, I suddenly… Continue

Occasionally I run across something that is poignant or simply well put. I especially like quotes that speak to the essence of what it is to be "human". I just ran across this, and to make certain it belonged to the author who originally posted it, I ran an entire sentence of it through the Google search. If a quote belongs to someone else and it is online, that search will find it. I have searched many times for whole sentences, often discovering that I have misquoted it for… Continue

We atheists can remain sober without AA.



But, for the same reason that AA members with religious faith have a hard time finding serenity and sanity in their lives without the intermittent wisdom of others to listen to, we atheists find ourselves in the same position. We "take what we need" from the things we hear at the table in order to contemplate our sobriety, just as they do, and we "leave the rest" of the gobbledygook for others to ponder--just as they do.



I was… Continue

After my first posting the day I joined Nexus, someone asked, "What is a metaphysical naturalist?" He could as easily have asked, "What is a naturalist?"

There are many kinds of naturalists, which for almost 3000 years has meant that whether or not a god exists, everything in the world is natural and operates on natural laws.

But actual, true atheism was almost unheard of in ancient Greece. Atheism was the mere denial that the many thousands of gods that were believed to exist had… Continue

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