“To certain newcomers and to those onetime agnostics who still cling to the A.A. group as their higher power, claims for the power of prayer may, despite all the logic and experience in proof of it, still be unconvincing or quite objectionable.” (Page 96, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
If you take thirty people with no power, and you put together that power, you still have no power. Thirty times zero equals zero.
If you take thirty people with no power and put them together, and power is activated, that power is not their power but has been activated by them.
The power activated in AA is the ‘more’ in ‘more than the sum of its parts’. The sum of its part is zero. Whatever AA is in terms of power is entirely from beyond the individuals in it.
Rather like Oxford University is the entity created beyond the faculties, the colleges, and the facilities and has a power that is greater than the sum of its parts, and is an entity of a different order than its physical constituents, a metaphysical entity, a human being is more than their cells, and AA is more than its people and institutions.
It’s that more that is God.
Moreover, the power that works through AA is arguably not
created by it. Think of a radio, which activates the reception of an orchestra
broadcast. The music does not originate in the radio set but is received
through it. There are no trumpets in the transistors. The trumpet sound is not
created by the transistor. Its conveyance is enabled by the transistor.