Dick B. discusses why AAs did not begin with an idol

I Study Alcoholics Anonymous History to Help the Alcoholic Who Still Suffers?

Do we study A.A. Historyt to learn what some writer decided to fashion as a secular alternative to the Creator? I don’t. Do we want to hear about self-made religion, absurd names for a “god,” strange “higher powers,” or some academic’s thoughts about praying to and depending on an higher power that is a light bulb, a group, a tree, the Big Dipper, a rock, a chair, “Something,” or “Somebody?” I don’t!

Shall we debate over what one writer called A.A.’s “non-Christian” God. Or another's “not-god-ness” or the latest literature emanating from “scholars” statingt one does not have to believe in anything at all to get well in A.A.? Soon I believe you will rejectI to the life-or-death malady of alcoholism. I do not, and I will not.

There is ample documentation for the biblical source of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we focus first on what A.A.’s own General Service Conference-approved literature has to say. A.A. published a valuable historical treasure when it released its pamphlet The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major Talks (item # P-53). And the following quote from the last major talk given by A.A. co-founder Dr. Bob in 1948 should start the ball rolling

There is ample additional material to be found in the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939. Also in Bill Wilson’s Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Also in A.A.’s DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, “Pass It On,” and The Language of the Heart. Please read our detailed citations from this literature as we move forward with this “higher power versus Alcoholics Anonymous history” review.