I go to alot of N.A meetings.  Typically at least seven a week.  Today's meeting was very difficult for me as it is at every meeting where a Higher Power is the main topic of discussion.  

I am aware that the program states that a belief in and turning your will and you life over to a higher power is one of the first necessary steps to recovery.  So what am I to do?  I am an atheist.  I do not believe in a god.  

Now I have been coming to these halls for a while now.  And I have been attempting to work the steps.  I can't seem to get past step one though.  I am not willing to turn my life over to the care of god "as I understand him"  Because I don't understand him.  I don't believe in a creator.  I don't believe in Jesus.  I don't believe in buddha.  I believe that we are here on this earth, that we make our decisions and our will is our own.  I do not and cannot believe that some god has a will for me.  

Things happen as a result of cause and effect not because some higher power deems it his will.   I truly believe that.  

I'm told, by  many people in this program, that I will not heal unless I change this belief.  Is this true?  I refuse to believe such a thing.   

I have had step one finished for over six months.  I cannot complete step two. I've read it and reread it and come to the same conclusion.  This program is trying to force me to believe in something that I don't believe in. 

While the step doesn't directly say it outright it insinuates in the questions and in the reading that not believing in a higher power is being close minded.    I have been brainwashed by parents and shrinks my entire life, and I feel that this is another attempt at that. I feel like an attempt is being made to make me feel like I am wrong.  My beliefs and the way I feel isn't wrong.  If there is one thing I learned in the years of therapy I've been subjected to it is that my feelings are not wrong.  

I want this program to work.  I want to work the steps.  I strongly feel however, that I cannot continue the steps if Becoming religious or believing in a higher power is a necessity.

Because of this I started attending A.A. meetings thinking that maybe they wouldn't be as adamant about the whole higher power thing.  I found it to be worse.  The continuously say "God of YOUR understanding."  At the end of the meeting the chant the Lords Prayer.  A religion specific prayer.  How is that a god of my understanding?

I guess the bottom line is am an atheist.  I have never, for as long as I can remember, believed in something that I have had no tangible evidence of its existence.                                             With that being said, where do I go from here?