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Chemistry and physics. The key aspect of it that I am balking at is not "outside of myself." Obviously there are things outside of myself that affect me, change me, and direct me.
The part that I balk at is "controlling" in the sense that there is some force out there that is aware of me, of my condition, and can change it.
To my view, there is no non-religious (and I consider "spirituality" to just be religion without a church; government has no more right to force a view of spirituality on me than they do to force a specific religion) way to accept and say these phrases:
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. 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.
Now, if you want to argue that the outside force can be something completely disinterested in you, your condition, and your fate, then that is a different thing. But then those 5 steps out of the 12 have essentially zero meaningful content. A disinterested force cannot remove your shortcomings. A disinterested force cannot offer increased understanding of its will. It can not return you to sanity, at least not with an intent. It can not accept responsibility for our care, will, and lives.
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One other thing, I don't mean to offer up that episode of Bull**** as a cite, but just a fair compendium of my views. And they were my views long before that episode existed. They were my views when I took the anti-mandatory view in a high school debate back in 1991. But in trying to avoid a long itemization of my views I just figured I'd point there. I don't expect (or ask) that anybody accept it as correct simply because it was on TV or because Penn Jillette said it while Teller stood quietly beside him.
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