Reg
11-03-2009, 07:19 AM
This is a condensed description that can be used to help friends or anyone you know to shed some light into what they may be involved in. I found it interesting how this info is similar to what AA uses. I checked out this out and found an amazing amount of info about Bill Wilson who is recognized as the one who started AA and the 12 Steps. It does appear to have many characteristics of a cult. My experience with the 12 Steps confirms much of this type of thinking. When any group tries to bypass your Critical
Thinking Process....BEWARE!
Common Cult Characteristics
Most of the following information was condensed from several pages of the REVIVE web site at http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~revive/index.html [Dead Link — the web site is gone]
Even though some of this information appears to have been tailored to fit Alcoholics Anonymous, it has not. This is just your generic run-of-the-mill cult description. In fact, the major concern of the Revive web site is currently a new cult called "International Churches of Christ" that is sweeping campuses. They don't even mention A.A.. They just coincidentally describe it. What is the slogan in A.A.? "There are no coincidences..."
— Agent Orange
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cultinfo.html#comparison
For anyone interested here are the websites I read that confirms what is mentioned about the AA.
The Funny Spirituality of Bill Wilson and A.A. (Long)
Then, when this allegedly "spiritual" A.A. member became annoyed at his ...... 'PASS IT ON': The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the .... http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-funny_spirituality.html
Bill W. Summary
For Wilson, spiritualism (communicating with the spirits of the dead) was a ... (1984) Pass It On: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached .... http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Bill_W.
C.S. Lewis warned against A.A. cofounders' spiritualism....
C.S. Lewis believed it. When a concerned Tony Guggenheim wrote Lewis a letter informing him of Bill and Lois Wilson’s Biblically forbidden activities, C.S. Lewis wrote back, “This is necromancy. Have nothing to do with it.”[4]
For more on Alcoholics Anonymous:
Wilson, in bondage to spiritualism, communed for decades with unclean spirits......
Examined over several decades, it is clear A.A. cofounder Bill Wilson repeatedly and willingly gave himself over to familiar spirits. A.A. historian Ernest Kurtz notes, “So profound was Bill’s immersion in this area that he at times confused the terms ’spiritualism’ and ’spirituality.’”[3]....
Writer Matthew J. Raphael is far less coy. A member of Alcoholics Anonymous himself, Raphael observes, “it might be said for the cofounders at least, A.A. was entangled with spiritualism from the very beginning.”[5]
Raphael explains, “Wilson himself seems to have been an ‘adept,’ that is, ‘gifted’ in the psychic sense; and he served as a medium for a variety of ‘controls,’ some of them recurrent. ‘Controls,’ in the lingo of spiritualism, are the discarnate entities who seem to usurp a medium’s identity and literally speak through him or (far more usually) her. Sometimes a control answers questions; sometimes a spirit seems to materialize.”[6]......
www.mywordlikefire.wordpress.com
As always, take what you want and leave the rest....
Thinking Process....BEWARE!
Common Cult Characteristics
Most of the following information was condensed from several pages of the REVIVE web site at http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~revive/index.html [Dead Link — the web site is gone]
Even though some of this information appears to have been tailored to fit Alcoholics Anonymous, it has not. This is just your generic run-of-the-mill cult description. In fact, the major concern of the Revive web site is currently a new cult called "International Churches of Christ" that is sweeping campuses. They don't even mention A.A.. They just coincidentally describe it. What is the slogan in A.A.? "There are no coincidences..."
— Agent Orange
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cultinfo.html#comparison
For anyone interested here are the websites I read that confirms what is mentioned about the AA.
The Funny Spirituality of Bill Wilson and A.A. (Long)
Then, when this allegedly "spiritual" A.A. member became annoyed at his ...... 'PASS IT ON': The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the .... http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-funny_spirituality.html
Bill W. Summary
For Wilson, spiritualism (communicating with the spirits of the dead) was a ... (1984) Pass It On: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached .... http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Bill_W.
C.S. Lewis warned against A.A. cofounders' spiritualism....
C.S. Lewis believed it. When a concerned Tony Guggenheim wrote Lewis a letter informing him of Bill and Lois Wilson’s Biblically forbidden activities, C.S. Lewis wrote back, “This is necromancy. Have nothing to do with it.”[4]
For more on Alcoholics Anonymous:
Wilson, in bondage to spiritualism, communed for decades with unclean spirits......
Examined over several decades, it is clear A.A. cofounder Bill Wilson repeatedly and willingly gave himself over to familiar spirits. A.A. historian Ernest Kurtz notes, “So profound was Bill’s immersion in this area that he at times confused the terms ’spiritualism’ and ’spirituality.’”[3]....
Writer Matthew J. Raphael is far less coy. A member of Alcoholics Anonymous himself, Raphael observes, “it might be said for the cofounders at least, A.A. was entangled with spiritualism from the very beginning.”[5]
Raphael explains, “Wilson himself seems to have been an ‘adept,’ that is, ‘gifted’ in the psychic sense; and he served as a medium for a variety of ‘controls,’ some of them recurrent. ‘Controls,’ in the lingo of spiritualism, are the discarnate entities who seem to usurp a medium’s identity and literally speak through him or (far more usually) her. Sometimes a control answers questions; sometimes a spirit seems to materialize.”[6]......
www.mywordlikefire.wordpress.com
As always, take what you want and leave the rest....