The Second Step reads “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” It gets a lot of attention because of that “power greater than ourselves” part, but not so much about the “believe” part.

Just what does it mean to believe? We throw the term around a lot, and it means different things at different times. Take “I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows,” for example. Hundreds of billions of raindrops fall from one big thunderstorm. If the statement were true we’d be inundated with flowers, even if they were tiny ones, and no one who’s given the idea much thought really believes that. (Nice poetry, though.)

Then there’s the fact that I believe that the Earth is a globe, similar in shape to the one in my office. I don’t know that, but I’ve seen enough information leading…