The relative success of the R.A. program seems to be due to the fact that a religious fundamentalist who no longer believes in man-made religions has an exceptional faculty for "reaching" and helping another religious fundamentalist.
In simplest form, the R.A. program operates when a recovered religious fundamentalist passes along the story of his or her own problems of resulting from man-made religious brainwashing and describes finding peace he or she has found in R.A. and invites the newcomer to join. The heart of the suggested program of personal recovery is contained in Twelve Steps describing the experience of the earliest members of the Society:
1. Understood and admitted we were powerless over religious fundamentalism indoctrination and that our lives had become unmanageable by accepting man-made religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, new ageism, and others on blind faith instead of rational thought.
2. Understood that while there may be a Creator, it really doesn’t matter that we know who he, she, or it is and that all religions were made up by men to control men’s lives while placing women in servant roles and were culturally, not spiritually inspired.
3. Understood and made a decision not to rely on blind faith and the man-made religions to tell us how to believe and to take responsibility for ourselves by studying history, anthropology, archeology, and biology and draw our own conclusions on how we got here and how to conduct our lives though rational thoughts.
4. Understood that by acting on the love in our hearts instead of hate we will be taking the right action and not by following man-made religions that were based on ancient cultures that were spiritually immature by today’s secular standards.
5. Understood that by believing in man-made religions, we were putting our lives in jeopardy as well as our loved ones by not thinking for ourselves and allowing others to think for us.
6. Understood that by believing in man-made religions, we would be inclined to take sides in international conflicts on the wrong side because we were brainwashed into thinking we were doing our particular god’s work instead of doing righteous actions based on rational thoughts.
7. Understood how believing in man-made gods stunted real spiritual growth.
8. Understood how wrong we were by trying to convert others to our own particular man-made religions and be willing to make amends to them all.
9. Understood how man-made religions have been and are the major causes for conflicts in the world.
10. Understood how political and religious leaders use man-made religions to manipulate their people to do unthinkable irrational things while knowing all the time that religions are nothing more than myths and tools to entice and excite people to do their bidding.
11. Understood that through education and meditation we would improve our conscious contact with a Creator higher than the man-made gods as we understood them, studying for knowledge and the power to carry that out instead of accepting man-made religious ideology that is irrational and contradicts science and common sense thus insuring true spiritual growth.
12. Understood after having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to religious fundamentalist and to practice these principles in all our affairs so as to enlighten religious fundamentalist and set them free from the brainwashing they have experienced in their past.
Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they feel unwilling or unable to do so. They will usually be asked to keep an open mind, to attend meetings at which recovered religious fundamentalist describe their personal experiences in achieving the truth, and to read R.A. literature describing and interpreting the R.A. program. R.A. members will usually emphasize to newcomers that only fundamentalist themselves, individually, can determine whether or not they are in fact a religious fundamentalist.
At the same time, it will be pointed out that all available spiritual testimony indicates that religious fundamentalism is a progressive illness, that it cannot be cured in the ordinary sense of the term, but that it can be arrested through education and thinking for one's own self instead of having to rely on blind faith and believing in the myths and ideology of man-made religious fundamentalism. This includes all major and minor religions of the world!
submitted by Just Sam.
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