Faith Based Idiocy

On Tuesday President George W. Bush spoke at the Jericho Progam about his past alcoholism saying:
"I understand faith-based programs. I understand that sometimes you can find the inspiration from a higher power to solve an addiction problem."

Certainly such a statement will be inspirational to recovering heroin addicts and drug dealers, possibly the only people to whom W is inspirational anymore besides Fox News anchors. But there is a difference between inspirational and sensible. To whom does this world view make sense?

With regard to addiction, faith doesn't actually do anything. The individual is the one who stops drinking, stops taking drugs. As W said, all faith does is provide "inspiration". If an alcoholic thinks that they cannot overcome their dependency on their own the belief in a higher power can provide them with the required inspiration, motivation, and sense of not being alone to overcome their addiction on their own.

The problem, for me, is that drunk W laying sodden, inebriated, and alone on the floor actually is alone when he cries out to invisible sky daddy. Invisible Sky Daddy is just a fabrication (spoiler alert). What makes W stop drinking is not invisible sky daddy but rather W.

It's sort of like how when a child stops using training wheels a parent will hold them upright on the bike. Then as the child moves forward the parent lets go and the child, under the assumption that the parent is holding on, stays mounted on their bike. The child is fully capable of keeping the bike upright. At the onset, though, they required the illusion of assistance to assure them of their ability. Of course, in the inebriated W scenario there never was an invisible sky daddy parent figure holding the bike of sobriety; it was always only ever W.

So why bother including the fabrication of invisible sky daddy? The individual is the one who overcomes the addiction. Whence the necessity for the illusion of assistance? Why not just accept reality, deal with it, and throw the bottle away?

Because that is what actually happens regardless of what delusion one embraces along the way.