Searching for GOD...

[ProfessorDavey]

No, the critical point is whether someone takes an absolutist position about their beliefs - regardless of whether those beliefs are morals framed in religious, political, cultural, traditional or philosophical language.

No - there is a clear distinction when a position is based on a belief that you should are obliged to adhere to the views of an ultimate moral authority.

[ProfessorDavey]

If I am fasting during Ramadan based on a belief that I am required to by my religion, and I am aware that fasting will likely result in me having interrupted sleep, and I know I have to get into my car and drive somewhere the next day and I will be in no fit state to drive safely then I will either not go on the journey, find an alternative safer way of travelling or not fast. My decision will change depending on who is impacted by my choices and how important the journey is.

But that is simply a classic case of moral dilemmas or moral conflicts - (covered in weeks 1 and 2 of the module).

That you have to make a decision between, on the one hand fasting and risking being a danger when you drive, or not fasting doesn't change the basic premise that you consider fasting to be morally right and presumably based on your religion and ultimately based on the ultimate moral authority principle. If you didn't adhere to the ultimate moral authority principle in this case there would be no moral dilemma.

That you might consider not fasting to be 'the lesser of two evils' in a particular circumstance doesn't negate the fact that you consider 'not fasting' to be an evil in the first place.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

OK - I was polite last time, but enough. Stop lying VG.

Except I'm not lying so I am indifferent whether you are polite or not.

Do you really teach ethics - that's worrying for your students if, as appears to be the case on this thread, you don't even know the meaning of the word "lying".

Pretty well the whole video involves him justifying that particular passage in the book, which he explains, justifies and adds some detail (e.g. on his thoughts on Pakistan and Iran, for example).

How many minutes in does he use the phrase "may be the only course of action available to us" to justify killing millions of civilians with a pre-emptive nuclear strike?

What he does do is say he didn't come up with the idea of killing millions of civilians with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, but it might just be one of those things that happens because other people (presumably in the US or Europe) with access to nuclear weapons have run the scenarios and may be prepared to carry out a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Which would be based on imperfect information and assumptions about the beliefs of others. 

Except what he wrote in his book was "What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry?"

Not sure what he meant when he wrote "If history is any guide" and not knowing where the warheads are - one would assume he is thinking of something like a nuclear-armed submarine, since if the nuclear weapons were long-range missiles launched from land not really seeing how a massive long range nuclear missile could be moved around undetected by satellite surveillance.

If he is thinking of a nuclear-armed sub, not sure how he arrives at the idea in his book that facing the threat of a nuclear-armed submarine "the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own." The submarine would be likely to survive a first strike and retaliate.

His first strike does not seem aimed at the submarine though as he says in his book "Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day". So his nuclear first strike would be aimed at a highly populated city - again, not sure what that achieves. And he ends with "but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe."

Then he writes about the response of the Muslim World to the nuclear first strike and how everyone has died because of a myth rather than because of trigger-happy loons launching nuclear first strikes. He then says he thinks "a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely". 

Harris definitely sounds like a nonsensical fruit-loop to me.

Read the passage (in its entirely rather than quote mining to lead to a conclusion which isn't the conclusion of the piece), watch the video. I cannot see how anyone can reasonably claim that the video does not involve him justifying the passage in his book. It does, so stop lying.

Not lying though you're welcome to believe that I am. Advising me not to quote-mine is pretty funny coming from you, given all the quote-mining you've been doing on here.

Will wait for you to tell me how many minutes in he actually mentions his assertion in his book that "the only thing likely to ensure our survival" is a nuclear pre-emptive first strike and that "it [nuclear pre-emptive strike] may be the only course of action available to us".

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

But that is simply a classic case of moral dilemmas or moral conflicts - (covered in weeks 1 and 2 of the module).

That you have to make a decision between, on the one hand fasting and risking being a danger when you drive, or not fasting doesn't change the basic premise that you consider fasting to be morally right and presumably based on your religion and ultimately based on the ultimate moral authority principle. If you didn't adhere to the ultimate moral authority principle in this case there would be no moral dilemma.

What do you mean by fasting being morally right? Since I don't think people who don't fast during Ramadan are morally wrong. How are you defining morals or what the words "morally right" means?

How it works is that I tried fasting during Ramadan while being an atheist just to see what it felt like and found it beneficial - denial of something you want is a useful self discipline. But it's much easier to sustain if you do it as part of a religious tradition where everyone fasts together at the same time. Hence fasting during Ramadan is easy. Fasting any other time, when lots of other people are not fasting and there is no shared camaraderie and rituals is much, much harder.

Another example is kung fu - there are lots of elements of martial arts where they motivate you to train with references to undetectable energy such as chi - and it turns out the training is very beneficial if you buy into the beliefs. But it is difficult to sustain the training unless you sign up to doing it as part of a regular class with other people.

Similarly, if I try to stop drinking alcohol based on my own will-power it doesn't work. But stopping drinking as part of a religious tradition with other people is much easier. Of course I can see the benefits of not drinking alcohol so it helps me maintain my religious practice. 

That you might consider not fasting to be 'the lesser of two evils' in a particular circumstance doesn't negate the fact that you consider 'not fasting' to be an evil in the first place.

Uh no - I don't consider 'not fasting' to be an evil. I consider 'not fasting' as me missing out on a beneficial practice that teaches me self-discipline and teaches me self-denial. 

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

No - there is a clear distinction when a position is based on a belief that you should are obliged to adhere to the views of an ultimate moral authority.

Just asserting that isn't convincing.

I think I'll stick to my view that the critical point is whether someone takes an absolutist position about their beliefs - regardless of whether those beliefs are morals framed in religious, political, cultural, traditional or philosophical language. If people acknowledge that they are imperfect, prone to error, and that multiple interpretations could be correct or that they could be wrong as they have no way of being certain about what any moral authority actually thinks about anything, then not seeing the problem.

[ProfessorDavey]

Except I'm not lying so I am indifferent whether you are polite or not.

Lying is not telling the truth. As this video involves him justifying the passage in his earlier book, and indeed involves virtually nothing other than him justifying and explaining the passage in his earlier book for you to claim that he wasn't asked to comment about that passage in the video and that he wasn't asked to justify the passage in his book is, well, just a lie.

It is there for all to see - see can read the passage (it is embedded earlier in the thread), we can look at the video (linked to previously and I did again) and we can all see that pretty well the entirety of the video involves Harris commenting on that passage and justifying that passage. To claim it doesn't is a lie.

[ProfessorDavey]

Another example is kung fu - there are lots of elements of martial arts where they motivate you to train with references to undetectable energy such as chi - and it turns out the training is very beneficial if you buy into the beliefs.

Martial arts are beneficial whether or not you buy into the beliefs as they involve physical exercise and mental practice. Plenty of people I know regularly engage in martial arts but consider the 'beliefs' to be mumbo-jumbo non-sense.

[ProfessorDavey]

Do you really teach ethics

Yes I do.

- that's worrying for your students

No it isn't.

if, as appears to be the case on this thread, you don't even know the meaning of the word "lying".

Except I do know the meaning of the word lying - hence you are lying when you claim that Harris didn't comment on, or justify the passage in his earlier book in his video, because that isn't true.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Lying is not telling the truth. As this video involves him justifying the passage in his earlier book, and indeed involves virtually nothing other than him justifying and explaining the passage in his earlier book for you to claim that he wasn't asked to comment about that passage in the video and that he wasn't asked to justify the passage in his book is, well, just a lie.

It is there for all to see - see can read the passage (it is embedded earlier in the thread), we can look at the video (linked to previously and I did again) and we can all see that pretty well the entirety of the video involves Harris commenting on that passage and justifying that passage. To claim it doesn't is a lie.

Yes it is there for all to see. Asserting I am lying is not convincing.

I will reassess my position when you let me know exactly at which point in the video (how many minutes and seconds in) he talks about the bit in his book where he wrote that the mass murder of innocent civilians via a pre-emptive nuclear strike may be an unthinkable crime and despite envisaging the death of "tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day" says "but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe."

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Martial arts are beneficial whether or not you buy into the beliefs as they involve physical exercise and mental practice. Plenty of people I know regularly engage in martial arts but consider the 'beliefs' to be mumbo-jumbo non-sense.

Sure - I didn't say martial arts was not beneficial unless you buy into the beliefs. Exercise is good.

What I did say was that buying into the beliefs about chi was beneficial to your training.

I have mentioned before the brain scans done on Shaolin monks and how practices and rituals related to the idea of harnessing chi seems to have caused changes to the brain e.g. brain receptors show up as registering less pain than the average person . And if an ordinary person tries doing those same practices and their brain is then scanned while exposed to pain, their brain receptors register less pain than before they did the exercises.

[ProfessorDavey]

Sure - I didn't say martial arts was not beneficial unless you buy into the beliefs.

Nor did I claim you did - I said that martial arts can be beneficial regardless of whether you buy into the beliefs.

But with your comment.

... and it turns out the training is very beneficial if you buy into the beliefs.

You very clearly equated the benefit with the beliefs. Seems as if you are equating level of benefit of something that many people adopt as physical exercise to whether you believe the underlying philosophy. I think that is non-sense, but you've made the claim so the onus is on you to provide the evidence. So justify your claim with research to indicate that martial arts adherents who adopt it purely for physical exercise gain less benefit than those who buy into the beliefs.

And before you posit your monk claim (no link to the study I note) I don't think feeling less pain when being deliberately exposed to pain is the kind of benefit most people think of when doing martial arts - they think of physical fitness, subtlety and dealing with stress. And of course most people who buy into the beliefs aren't Shaolin monks.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Sounds a bit atheist-ist if you get my drift - i.e. prejudiced.

Why it is somehow acceptable to only single out atheists for criticism for making prejudiced generalisations about theists, when there are plenty of non-atheists who do exactly the same. So you criticise people who are prejudiced by being, err ... prejudiced. Doesn't really compute, does it VG.

Sorry - missed responding to this. Why would I not single out a particular type of atheist in this context? If someone thinks there is a problem with someone being a theist, and they think this way because they are an atheist, then it makes sense to reference their atheism as being a cause of their prejudice. Especially if their complete ignorance of the complexity and diversity of thought amongst theists is because they are too prejudiced against theism to bother doing any basic research into the different schools of thought. And even more so when I am referring to a particular type of atheist who comes out with simplistic, ignorant generalisations about theists.

Looking forward to your explanation of how it is prejudiced to criticise the opinions of atheists who have a particular mindset that negatively influences their opinion of theists and causes them to spout simplistic, ignorant generalisations about all theists.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Nor did I claim you did - I said that martial arts can be beneficial regardless of whether you buy into the beliefs.

But with your comment.

... and it turns out the training is very beneficial if you buy into the beliefs.

You very clearly equated the benefit with the beliefs. Seems as if you are equating level of benefit of something that many people adopt as physical exercise to whether you believe the underlying philosophy. I think that is non-sense, but you've made the claim so the onus is on you to provide the evidence. So justify your claim with research to indicate that martial arts adherents who adopt it purely for physical exercise gain less benefit than those who buy into the beliefs.

Quote-mining again PD - that's getting to be a habit for you.

What I actually said was "Another example is kung fu - there are lots of elements of martial arts where they motivate you to train with references to undetectable energy such as chi - and it turns out the training is very beneficial if you buy into the beliefs." So I was referring to those elements of martial arts training where they reference chi. I was not referring to all martial arts training. There is lots of martial arts training where they do not mention chi at all, and you just practice punching, kicking and throws or defensive techniques and build up muscle strength or stamina or flexibility.

And I was saying that if you buy into the beliefs about chi you get benefits from the training where concepts such as chi have been introduced as part of the training.

And before you posit your monk claim (no link to the study I note) I don't think feeling less pain when being deliberately exposed to pain is the kind of benefit most people think of when doing martial arts - they think of physical fitness, subtlety and dealing with stress. And of course most people who buy into the beliefs aren't Shaolin monks.

Thanks for your opinion on what most people think of when they do marital arts training, I am referring to people who follow training that is focused on concepts such as chi rather than the people who train for physical fitness.

Here's a link to the changes in the brains of Shaolin monks during meditation since you are interested - https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/zoran-josipovic.html

And regarding pain I was referring to a show that looked at some of the differences in the physiology and brains of a Shaolin monk https://drexel.edu/now/archive/2018/September/History-Channel-Show-Visits-Drexel-In-Search-Of-Superhuman-Answers/

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

No I'm not.

Yes you are

What video do you think you were watching. He explicitly denied your accusations.

No he didn't deny it because he wasn't asked about it. Unless you can tell me how many minutes/ seconds in he addresses his statement in his book where he wrote that the mass murder of innocent civilians via a pre-emptive nuclear strike may be an unthinkable crime and despite envisaging the death of "tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day" says "but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe."

He wasn't asked in the video why he thought a pre-emptive strike may be the only course of action available. He didn't write in his book that other people think it may be the only course of action available but I don't subscribe to that view. He wrote that it may be the only course of action available to us.

He wasn't asked about his assertions about a suicidal regime having viable long range missiles that they have tested which can't be detected by satellites.

He wasn't questioned on his view that the 9/11 hijackers flew planes into buildings because they were suicidal rather than because they opposed US hegemony in the Middle East or to get revenge based on their perception that sanctions against Iraq led to thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, or because they wanted US troops to withdraw from Saudi Arabia.

That's not advocating doing it. That's warning us that we must take steps so that it never happens. It's obvious and I think your religious sensibilities are stopping you from interpreting it truthfully.

Nope -  it goes way beyond warning us that we must takes steps so that it never happens. Your prejudices are stopping you from interpreting it truthfully.

Writing that the mass murder of innocent civilians via a pre-emptive nuclear strike may be an unthinkable crime and despite envisaging the death of "tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day", writing "but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe." sounds like he thinks a pre-emptive nuclear strike that kills millions may be the only course of action available.

When someone writes that something may be the only course of action available - they are stating their opinion that having considered all the options available they are leaning towards choosing a particular option.

At no point was he challenged on why he thinks it may be the only course of action available. Nor was he asked how history shows us that we will not be sure where the extremely large long range missiles with nuclear warheads owned by this regime are.

And as I said above he made many simplistic assertions that ignored the stated political goals of Al Qaeda or even basic concepts about jihad and instead just presented his thoughts on a suicide-loving regime that he constructed without any credible evidence that such a regime would ever exist let alone acquire long-range nuclear weapons.

His ignorant simplistic assertions show that he cannot comprehend the thinking of his enemy. Therefore it is not surprising that he has failed to come up with an accurate assessment of the problems, and is therefore considering the possible solution of:

"If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe."

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Yes I do.
No it isn't.
Except I do know the meaning of the word lying - hence you are lying when you claim that Harris didn't comment on, or justify the passage in his earlier book in his video, because that isn't true.

To be fair on Davey though, one presumes he is defending the indefensible in his own time rather than professionally.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Can you not see just how circular that argument is.

Sorry - missed responding to this. No because it's not a circular argument.

So effectively - you will, on day be judged by the divine moral authority and if you haven't lived up to the expectation of that divine moral authority then you will be punished. But somehow you aren't beholden to that divine moral authority but are responsible for your own decisions.

It's really not a difficult concept to understand so not sure why you are struggling to comprehend how it works. The belief in a divine moral authority is that whatever judgement of "an atom's worth of good" you have done or an "atom's worth of bad" you have done will be perfectly just - it's a concept of perfect judgement which is not prone to error unlike human judgement. And yes the belief is that we are responsible for our decisions because we are not robots - we have minds and are required to reason out our moral choices based on the information available to us and our abilities - nature/nurture. The belief is that perfect judgement will take into account our nature/nurture.

It is bit like saying that someone with a gun held to their head is able to freely chose what course of action to take, rather than do the bidding of the gun holder.

See above - what gun? We have our own minds and can reason out our moral choices based on the information available and our nature.

Your inability to understand this seems to be based on a prejudiced view of theists, based on you being an atheist. But as an atheist you should be able to comprehend that based on your lack of belief in a supernatural entity, there can't be anyone else making moral choices for theists other than theists. And theists must be making moral choices based on their nature/ nurture, which is exactly the same way everyone else on the planet makes moral choices.

Like everyone else does, theists will reason based on emotion and information and some of the information that influences their choice could be their social, political, economic, family environments, philosophical and theological arguments they have come across, books they have read, including religious texts, speeches they have heard, message boards they have frequented, friends, mentors, their own natural inclinations and desires etc.

The difference is that atheists believe they will only be held accountable by society in the here and now while they are alive; theists have a belief they will also be held accountable for all of the above after they die. But they have absolutely no way of knowing what that judgement will be as they don't usually claim to have a hotline to their deity to give them a running commentary or an end of term report on how they are doing. Sure some can fervently believe they are on the 'honour roll' or whatever - heading for paradise - but they can't know it. Some can even believe they do have a hotline to their deity and their deity has told them they have a duty to do something.

Lots of people can fervently believe all kinds of things including that they are right, that they are winning an argument, that their morals are better, that men can be women, that they have a moral duty to save the planet by causing massive disruption or acts of terrorism, that there is a god, that their individual concept of god that resonates most with them is true for everyone, that atheists are better than theists or that theists are better than atheists or pretty much whatever they want - you can't control someone's thoughts. And that's the point - everyone's thoughts are generated by their own brain and there is no gun to your head (except in small number of cases where someone is literally pointing a gun at your head).

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

In which case there is absolutely no need to include the word athiest is there VG - the word you might want to use instead is people. Note that I've already pointed out that some theists are also perfectly adept at making simplest, generalised comments about other theists. So why not just make it clear that you have gripe with in the minds of people, including Harris, who make very simplistic, ignorant , uniformed generalisations about theists. Ah but that would mean you'd have to admit that your simplistic theist=good, athiest=bad mantra begins to fall apart.

Oh sorry PD - just spotted this bit of nonsense from you, which I have highlighted in bold. Please show me where I have ever once said theist=good, atheist=bad let alone said it enough times for it to be a mantra. Hope you don't just make stuff up and assert things without evidence when you are 'teaching'.

And can you clarify your point about people vs atheists - we're on a message board where various atheist posters have singled out theists or religious texts for actions that all people do e.g. war, terrorism, tribalism, extremism. And when it's pointed out to them that people including atheists carry out all the same actions, the response is that this is 'whataboutry' and to stick to the discussion of theist actions. Why would you want to spoil the fun now by saying actually we should expand the subject of all discussions out to 'people' rather than singling out a specific group for criticism? The message board is already too quiet as it is - if you stopped all the singling groups out for criticism, the traffic on here would probably be non-existent.

[Alan Burns]

In a recent episode of "Songs of Praise" on BBC, a former drug addict witnessed to a time at the height of her addiction when she was commenting on the Christian faith, saying she could not understand it.  She was advised by a Christian that if she continued to look at it from the outside, she would never understand - only by taking a step in faith would she come to know Jesus.  She took that step in faith 12 years ago and has been free from her addiction ever since, and Jesus has come into her life.

[Enki]

In a recent episode of "Songs of Praise" on BBC, a former drug addict witnessed to a time at the height of her addiction when she was commenting on the Christian faith, saying she could not understand it.  She was advised by a Christian that if she continued to look at it from the outside, she would never understand - only by taking a step in faith would she come to know Jesus.  She took that step in faith 12 years ago and has been free from her addiction ever since, and Jesus has come into her life.

On the face of it this is a heartwarming story and, if it helped her control or solve her addiction, that is undoubtedly a good thing.

However let's look at the bigger picture and try to put it into context, shall we? One regular form of addiction is that of alcoholism, and in that field Alcoholics Anonymous is a major player. They often make use of the 12 step treatment:

https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/treatment-program/related/12-step-pros-cons/

a treatment which actually began with the AA and originally emphasised the importance of the Christian God. It is interesting that over time the idea of God has been supplanted by the idea of a 'higher power' so  the 12 step treatment has become more spiritual than religious, Also, as the number of addicts who were not Christian has increased, there are now clear alternatives such as AA Agnostica and Secular AA, which are religion free and have modified their 12 steps accordingly.

There are also other organizations which deal with alcohol addiction, such as the secular S.O.S. and the SMART recovery service which utilises methods based upon the latest scientific research and there are also many offshoots which cater for peoples of other faiths and beliefs.

There is no evidence that Christian oriented organizations fare any better with addicts than non Christian ones. As for your heartwarming example, it is trivially easy to show other positive examples where religion/God/Jesus played no significant part. E.g.

https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/recovery/story/beths-recovery-story/

Perhaps the bottom line is enshrined in one of AA's slogans: "Take what works and leave the rest."

[jeremyp]

How many minutes in does he use the phrase "may be the only course of action available to us" to justify killing millions of civilians with a pre-emptive nuclear strike?

Trick question: he doesn't. What he actually says is that it may be the inevitable consequence of Muslim extremists getting hold of nuclear weapons and because it is such a horrific thing, we must do everything we can to prevent it from happening.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Trick question: he doesn't. What he actually says is that it may be the inevitable consequence of Muslim extremists getting hold of nuclear weapons

the inevitability of it as asserted by a trigger happy lunatic like Sam Harris. 

and because it is such a horrific thing, we must do everything we can to prevent it from happening.

The bit he was criticised for by many who don't share his opinions was the imbecilic, unevidenced and war-mongering passage:

"If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe."

[Alan Burns]

On the face of it this is a heartwarming story and, if it helped her control or solve her addiction, that is undoubtedly a good thing.

However let's look at the bigger picture and try to put it into context, shall we? One regular form of addiction is that of alcoholism, and in that field Alcoholics Anonymous is a major player. They often make use of the 12 step treatment:

https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/treatment-program/related/12-step-pros-cons/

a treatment which actually began with the AA and originally emphasised the importance of the Christian God. It is interesting that over time the idea of God has been supplanted by the idea of a 'higher power' so  the 12 step treatment has become more spiritual than religious, Also, as the number of addicts who were not Christian has increased, there are now clear alternatives such as AA Agnostica and Secular AA, which are religion free and have modified their 12 steps accordingly.

There are also other organizations which deal with alcohol addiction, such as the secular S.O.S. and the SMART recovery service which utilises methods based upon the latest scientific research and there are also many offshoots which cater for peoples of other faiths and beliefs.

There is no evidence that Christian oriented organizations fare any better with addicts than non Christian ones. As for your heartwarming example, it is trivially easy to show other positive examples where religion/God/Jesus played no significant part. E.g.

https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/recovery/story/beths-recovery-story/

Perhaps the bottom line is enshrined in one of AA's slogans: "Take what works and leave the rest."

You appear to have missed the main point in my post, which is that you cannot understand Christianity by looking from the outside.  By taking the essential first step in faith, she came to know Jesus.  Having her addiction cured was a bonus, but discovering God's love was the ultimate reward.

[Enki]

You appear to have missed the main point in my post, which is that you cannot understand Christianity by looking from the outside.  By taking the essential first step in faith, she came to know Jesus.  Having her addiction cured was a bonus, but discovering God's love was the ultimate reward.

No I didn't. You attempted to peddle your message through the example of a reformed drug addict, who was influenced at the height of her vulnerability to take the Jesus path, and you lead us to believe that because of that she 'has been free from her addiction ever since'. I stand completely by how I responded.

[ProfessorDavey]

Having her addiction cured was a bonus, but discovering God's love was the ultimate reward.

AB - are you really suggesting that if you can have one rather than the other it is preferable to have a christian with a dangerous addiction problem rather than a non-christian who is cured of their dangerous addiction. That seems to be the conclusion of your comment.

[Gordon]

In a recent episode of "Songs of Praise" on BBC, a former drug addict witnessed to a time at the height of her addiction when she was commenting on the Christian faith, saying she could not understand it.  She was advised by a Christian that if she continued to look at it from the outside, she would never understand - only by taking a step in faith would she come to know Jesus.  She took that step in faith 12 years ago and has been free from her addiction ever since, and Jesus has come into her life.

So she found a vehicle, or a crutch if you will, that helped her deal with her issues: that is, of course, to her personal benefit but it doesn't imply that the beliefs she acquired were objectively true even if they proved useful to her.

I recall I guy I worked with a few years ago now who had similar problems, and he also had added complications due to his anger management issues when drinking: then one day a colleague persuaded him to try hill-walking just once and it produced the same type of change - he became a sober 'Munro bagger', and last I heard of him he was still roaming the hills and mountains of Scotland.