Aspies and religion

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You underestimate how "all-knowing" would work in practice. God would have known before creating Beelzebub exactly how, when and why he would turn his back on god. If there was any way to prevent it he would have known that too. And yet Beelzebub still fell...

(btw free will has nothing to do with it, an all-knowing god could easily have created free-willed humans that didn't fight each-other. For example by adding telepathy)

It's things like this that are turning me agnostic. Why? Just look around you. If there is a God, it's pretty clear that he either doesn't care about the well-being of the world he created, or he inflicts suffering on people just for the enjoyment of it. Some people might argue: "No, it's the devil doing the hurting." Maybe the devil is doing it, but what if I counter-argued that God authorizes it and/or orders him to do it? "Nonsense!", some people might say. Well, it's right there in the book of Job, where God allowed a righteous man to suffer.

So in the end, if I want to feel better, I sometimes pray to God. It might be a little more than a psychological trick, but if it helps, why not? But when I want to accomplish something, God is the last entity I would ask for help. Instead, I research what resources are available to me, assess what I can do with the skills I have, and follow through on completing the task.

If God's role is to enforce morality, then my sense of integrity does the job. It acts as my God. I don't need some power-crazy invisible entity to do it for me.

I was raised in the UK, and we don't put much emphasis on religion here. My parents never tried to introduce me to religion. I went to a religious school but it had no real effect on me (and most other pupils came out of it atheist or not caring too, which is ironic). By the time I was 10 I started saying I wasn't religious, and I've been atheist since.

But it wasn't like a big decision to me. I was never raised religiously so I'm not religious. Most of my NT peers aren't religious either. So my AS never really affected my religious choices.

The way i see it, is that "Satan" is a test for us and God being all-knowing, intended it this way, "He" created humans to worship "Him" and gave us certain characteristics and trials to test our conviction in that... i find it all very interesting and humbling, a lot of people get these delusions of grandeur and start to think humans are these great amazing creatures. Islam teaches us that God tests the ones "HE" loves the most and that after every hardship is promised ease (in this life or the next life) and that the hardships we go through not only are they tests but they are a means for erasing our sins.

I always say that so many people look for intelligent life out in the universe and yet ignore the signs of intelligent life outside our world (God) that we have been given already. And i wonder why Science and Religion can't compliment each other rather than fight each other? They are both a means to learn about our existence, purpose and world. OF course, as a Muslim, i believe science is a man made practice so a lot of it is human theory and flawed, whereas religion in it's purest form is from the Creator.

This is a VERY interesting thread to read.

My older son was leaning towards not believing in the "family" religion (Mormonism) while he was in high school. We wanted him to attend church with us, but did not push him to go to any activity that he was completely against attending. We also did not push him into going on a Mormon mission. One of his problems with the Mormon religion was the concept of obedience to the various standards of the church. He had a really great bunch of friends in high school, all from varying religions, and he attended methodist bible study groups as well as participated in a catholic passion play group. He eventually decided to go on a Mormon mission, and now he is even more orthodox than we, his parents, are. It's actually quite an odd position to be in!

I don't know how our younger son will feel about religion. Currently, he is the most moral and kind person I've ever known. I would love to be able to say that this is a result of his attending church, but frankly, I just think he was born this way. I know that pushing a person into the religion of the parent's choice will backfire ultimately. Pushing someone on the spectrum into a religion will DEFINITELY backfire, as a person's religious feelings rely more on faith (which is relatively intangible) and less on science and pragmatics. The older I become, the more I think that organized religion is good as a structure for one's beliefs and way of life, but it is more important to build a personal relationship with God than anything else, coupled with a Christ-like love for other people. That is what I hope my children eventually achieve, and therefore, hopefully it will bring them peace and happiness.

God being all knowing already knows the outcome. Why bother testing? If humans fail his tests it says more about her flaws as a creator than our flaws as a creation: He knew before he started that we'd fail the test and did nothing. If the tests are a way to improve humanity why is a perfect god so inefficient? He could just create pre-improved humans.

why dose she need worship?

Please don't be so insulting. We're civilized beings we can debate without name calling.

Well from Science's point of view we work with empirical evidence, it is impossible to get empirical evidence about god* so when doing research scientists ignore him.

There's also the fact that on quite a few occasions religion has attempted to discredit science. Evolution vs creationism being the most famous, naturally science is going to feel put out over that. If you want religion and science to work together then fine, but you have to accept that when it comes to the physical world scientists know there stuff and if it disagrees with religion then either prove scientists wrong with empirical evidence or concede the point.

As an Atheist I believe that science and religion are both created by humans and thus both are flawed, however the scientific method accepts its imperfections and is designed to compensate; have you ever noticed that there are no proofs in science: its called the theory of gravity or the theory of evolution, not the law of gravity or the law of evolution. That's a clever psychological tricks scientists are useing on themselves to make sure they never forget that there's always room for improvement.

Religion on the other hand believes it already has the perfect answer and as a result enshrines both the good and the bad as sacred rather than attempting to increase the good and remove the bad. The entire purpose of human existence is to become better humans (there might be something more once we've done that but its a long way off), I can't truly respect any institution that isn't actively trying to improve itself. Not until we've created a Utopia and earnt some lurals to rest upon.


* I'm over simplifying, several people have scientifically studied god before, specifically they studied the medical effects of prayer, results are contradictory and I wouldn't be surprised at bias in either direction.

Ok, first, me being religious, you being athiest, we are not going to come to a total agreement, but hopefully a mutual respect. I never intended to insult science or any belief at all in my post and anything that was taken that way was misinterpreted, unintended. Also i'm not a learned scholar or anything like that so my arguments/points are limited, but i do my best to find an understanding and respectful disagreement in topics like this (unless someone is being downright rude and insulting, then i'll bite back and walk away) and if i can't reply, i am not afraid to admit that i don't know the answer to that, i'm perfectly comfortable with my limitations.

Perhaps we are an experiment. Perhaps God decided to put some things out of His* control. Perhaps God planned all of this and wanted to watch it play out. I don't claim to know or attempt to know. What makes sense to me, makes sense to me, and if i don't understand the rest.. i'm ok with that. For the most part i don't blindly believe but there are some things that i don't understand and it's not enough for me to lose my faith it's just enough for me to realize my limitations as a creation.


Who said anything about "needing" worship? Maybe He wanted it.


I wasn't talking individual people or groups of people. I was talking humans as a species have this sort of idea that we are more significant than we really are in the bug scheme of things. It may just be human nature, God may have wanted us to be this way so that we could search and learn and understand, perhaps God created us to be able to understand more about Him and that's why we are the way we are. Again... i don't know or attempt to explain any of the creators intentions or ideas.


See, the You and Us tone bothers me a whole lot and prevents objective conversation on this issue in so many cases. It comes from both sides of the fence (science and religion) and that's why they can't compliment each other. They don't have to always AGREE but they can certainly compliment each other. There are several things in the Qur'an that are backed up by science that was discovered long after the time of Muhammad (peace be upon him) and that's an example of Science and Religion complimenting each other.

"Religion" has not tried to prove science wrong, PEOPLE have in the name of religion. "Science" is not put out over it, PEOPLE are. So many people personify their beliefs and then it becomes a personal tit for tat, that's unnecessary, we can talk about this objectively without compromising our belief/faith (or lack there of) in it.


You know, there are certain "rules" for following religion, and there are certain "methods" to following science. That means there is a certain way in which it needs to be done in order to be credible and sound. This is true for both as far as i can see it.

You confuse religion, with the religious individual. There is ALWAYS room for improvement. When i talk about religion here, i am NOT talking all religions, i'm not speaking "on behalf" of Islam or Muslims, but i'm speaking from the position of a muslim and basing my comments on Islam and not the christian or other religious way of doing things. If someone is to follow religious teachings, it is ALL about improving oneself, it is ALL about acquiring knowledge, it is ALL about bettering yourself, "fixing" the wrong and improving on the good. That's what religion IS! There is never going to be a perfect (ideal) collective or even individual human existence, i don't think we have the capacity for that (i know i'm sounding a bit like pooh bear here "bears of little brains" but i don't UNDERestimate the capabilities of the human mind, i only accept and respect the limitations of the human mind and am humbled to them) but it is ALL about learning and betterment through that, whatever way you look at it.

* I have a problem with the personifying terms when applied to God (heck, i have a problem with the word God as well) i prefer to just say Allah (or God to make it more friendly to the lay english speaking reader) when i can, but for simplicity sake use the terms Him/His/He.

But being all knowing its never out of his control, lets say god puts things on "the table" and presses play. Everything on the table is out of gods control. However she'd know in advance before putting anything on the table the exact results of any combination that can be put on the table.

The thing about being all knowing is that its utterly inescapable, there is absolutely nothing God could do that he dosn't know the exact outcomes of. Even turning her all-knowing off wouldn't work because he'd know the exact result of doing so up until the moment she actually did turn it off.

Ok then, same question why did he want worship?

We're not that important in terms of the universe, but we pretty much rule this planet; I'd say if you ignore the stuff that isn't actually affecting our daily lives (I.E. everything outside our solarsystem and most of the stuff inside it) then that attitude is justified.

Besides from my POV there's not much diffrence between what your saying and the idea that God loves us. Both really big up the importance of mankind.

I am a scientist (computer science student), I am not religious. "You and us" is etymologically accurate.

There's plenty of room for science and religion to compliment eachother, but if religion and science are actually in disagreement then I don't see complimentary views. Science is all about facts (scientists do agree that opinions are important, but they're for when your not wearing the labcoat) and the thing about facts is that either right or wrong: the speed of light is either 299 792 458 m / s or it isn't, you can't agree to disagree over this stuff, you just agree that further study is needed and one day the answer will be found.

I'm not surprised, back when there was an Islamic empire it was full of seriously good scientists.

I use "Science" as a shorthand for the scientific community, similarly I use "Religion" as a shorthand for the religious community, so yes we're agreeing on this point

No argument there.

That is true, but its not what I was talking about. While religion is big on improving the individual believers you never get a group of priests to sitting down and saying "Its been a while since the Bible/Qur'an was written, a lot has changed since then and it needs an update".

Why only masculine pronouns? If we were created in gods image, god's image must include both male and female.

As I posted earlier, my 11 year old son has decided that God is science. While that doesn't make sense to most of you, it makes sense to HIM, and so he can fit faith into his system of logic. I am not about to call it flawed, even if it is different from my own way of comprehending things.

Logic is a lot more flexible than many like to think it is. While there are times everything involved is black and white, many other times the components are far more gray. So much depends on what one has been exposed to, seen, or learned of; one's personal experience in life.

But, certainly, I have rarely seen anyone as committed to their own logic as AS are. It comes out pretty clearly in threads like this one that once a conclusion has been reached, it gets held onto pretty strongly. For some, that conclusion leaves room for God. For others, it does not. The main thing we know from countless discussions on this site is that neither group is ever going to bend towards the other, so it is rather pointless to continue breaking down arguments.

If you want to debate the logic of faith, it would be more appropriate to go to the PPR forum. Whether or not God exists has nothing to do with parenting; but whether or not AS is naturally incompatible with faith was quite a valid question, given the number of parents here raising AS children in households that practice faith.

I'm not even going to attempt to try to figure this out. I don't know but again, it's not something to lose my faith over, i don't see it as a flaw in my religion or a mistake or a proof against God. A lot of the things i don't understand i think of this way, our minds are limited, there is only SO much we can understand as far as God is concerned, and so we are only told so much, some of it is not going to be exactly as we understand it, a lot of it will be hard to understand because we apply it to our own world and selves when it is something totally else. Maybe this limit to understand is directly related to our sense of significance


Another I don't know. Why not?


Touché. I do think humans have a good bit of significance, and i think that is because God loves us, he gave us a degree and sense of power and significance, and also responsibility (and that's why Satan and his posse hate us so much. Muslims don't believe he's a fallen angel BTW)


Fair enough, but what if i was a Muslim scientist? (I'm not... but what if! I would be us and them)


Science isn't all about fact, a lot of it is Theory which isn't fact until it's proven or dis proven. Some theories may never be proven but there are still people who believe in said theory.

Also Scientists may not be able to agree to disagree on some things (like your example the Speed of light) but science and religion can agree to disagree (here I am personifying)


The Qur'an was revealed before any Islamic empire. These were pagan arabs whose currency was poetry and whose economy thrived not only on trade but also on tourism from pilgrims who came to worship idols at the Kabah. They were no great scientific empire.

And isn't the fact that there were so many great scientists in the Islamic Empire, proof that science and religion can indeed compliment each other? Perhaps that's a matter of perspective.


I guess my main problem with it (and it's used a lot so, it's not a problem with what YOU are saying, just in general with the terms) is that both communities are made up of a vast spectrum of different views and beliefs on things within their respective communities. So it's a little too general for my taste. I'm a pretty orthodox Sunni muslim, but that doesn't mean i agree with every other orthodox sunni muslim or with any particular sunni muslim group KWIM?


Well, without wanting to offend anyone or start any offshoot debates. The Bible has been changed over the years which is why there are so many problems with it today. The Quran is another story and the original arabic remains. See it was passed down from generation to generation as a completely memorized text, it was oral as well as written and there are certain VERY specific rules that one needs to follow in order to memorize and recite it correctly (it's also like poetry, a lot of it rhymes even to our non arabic speaking ears) there are a lot of people in the Islamic community throughout history who have it memorized completely (including the leaders of the mosques who generally HAVE to have it memorized to become leaders of the mosque) and that in and of itself would prevent one group or one person from going in and trying to change it. It would be picked up on by the honest people pretty easily. So in its original arabic form, it is unchanged.

Muslims believe that it can be applied to any time and any people (that the bible and torah were sent to their respective peoples, the Jews at the times, and then Islam was later sent as a completed version of the original messages, so perfected and completed and then sent to the rest of the humans for the rest of time until the day of judgement) Now whether the leaders of Muslim communities are applying it correctly is a WHOLE other issue. We have to go way back to the first Islamic empires, THAT is Sharia being applied correctly. The Qur'an and tradition of the Prophet (authentic ahadith, which has it's own science to understanding what is and isn't authentic and how they know that... it's all about chains of narrators and how trustworthy a each narrator was, if there is even one questionable person, it's not considered Sahih (completely authentic) then there are levels so you know just exactly how authentic this particular hadith is etc.) it sets out a complete political and societal structure, if it's followed correctly then it is a sound society. But there are no countries doing this now and there hasn't been for a very very long time.

Also there ARE some parts of the Islamic texts that were sent only for a particular situation at the time when it was sent. And there are some parts which deprecate other parts because of that. Understanding all of this is a science in and of itself, there is a certain method you have to follow in your understand, you don't just read and make it up as you go along.


Being created in God's image is a very christian belief. No, we were not created in God's image and God is neither male nor female (a huge problem with Christian belief is the personification of God) God isn't something we can compare to anything really. I prefer not to involve gender at all but Monotheistic God is usually called He and usually if someone uses She they are either athiest or Pagan. I didn't decide that, so i'm just being a conformist for the sake of being clear.

DW_a_mom you are a moderator right? Are you able to split this thread so that the off topic discussion is in it's own thread in the appropriate forum?

Another problem with AS people i've noticed is ... we can't NOT say anything in discussions like this that involve our "special interests" (which this happens to be one of mine... in case it wasn't noticed hehe) It's almost impossible for me to go past something like this and NOT say something. It may actually be impossible.

I enjoy discussions like this even when there is no mutual conclusion, as long as they are respectful. I liked having it in the parenting forum because there is less chance of being attacked in here and more chance in the religion forum (because there are people who are bent on doing that so will go there for that exact purpose)

But it is off topic so if you are able to, or another mod, split the thread, that would be good so we can continue where we left off.

I agree it is a lot more flexible than we like to think (hence my belief that science and religion CAN indeed compliment each other) and i was SO much like your son as a child, except the idea that i got so strongly at a very young age (5 at the oldest) despite being raised in a non-religious (hippy but not overtly anti religious) household was that there IS indeed a creator. I spent over a decade after that, my entire childhood, searching for the religion that made sense to me and that spoke to my beliefs. I got ALL the books on world religon out of the library several times, read them, asked people for any information they had on religions that looked interesting (mum had a pamphlet on Hare Krishna and one on Bahai that she was given in the 70's, Hare Krishna was interesting but too christian and not clear enough for me but Bahai looked interesting) i ended up becoming bahai at 16 (after being christian and mormon and sort of pagan and trying to create my own religion ) but i developed an interest in Islam around the same time (i became engaged to a muslim shortly after becoming bahai, so decided to learn about his religion with NO intention of become muslim) and so started noticing flaws in bahai that were explained very well in Islam. Read allll the books i could find (even kids ones) on islam, and finally for the first time ever felt like THIS was the one i had been looking for, THIS one explained my beliefs better than any of the others i had read about. That was 8 years ago.

I think it's time to stop arguing over the sex of God. It should be quite clear to anybody who's ever opened a Bible that God is male. He is a father god, and he has been personified that way throughout the whole book. Christians like to ignore the blatant sexism in there, and for their part I understand, but I don't think you can legitimately pick and choose what you believe and then say it all comes from the same source. You end up adding your own ideas (such as sexual equality, which was obviously not on the mind of anyone in the times covered by the Bible).

This is the same approach that allows some Christians to justify attacks on, say, homosexuals, while ignoring their own actions that ought to be seen as equally sinful (if in fact you believe in such). There are plenty of statements in the Bible that are clear as day and are dismissed for one reason or another as irrelevant, and in the very same chapters are vague condemnations of this or that, which Christians choose to uphold unwaveringly, apparently because they had already decided what they think about the issue.

If you hold the Bible in such high regard, you owe it to yourself and your religion to at least acknowledge it's inadequacies (various parts were written by idealists and radicals thousands of years ago, or handed down orally for some time before being committed to writing, or plainly stolen from other religions, and much seems out of place place in a modern world). If you are going to choose which parts to believe and which to dismiss, please do so with some consistency and better reasons than prior belief.

I'm not sure if you're talking to me WurdBendur, but FTR i'm not Christian.

Dilemma, it's a good question if it should be split, and I could do that, I do have the tools. My main concern is that it not get contentious, and if it can stay relevant in some way to parenting, that is even better. The issue with splitting is that there is always some flow in the movement from original topic to the tangent topic, and the logic of all that gets lost when you try to split. It's not like parents can't debate religion, it's more that religion topics tend to attract a lot of people who never come to this board normally, and who aren't used to be behaving with the decorum people are used to here. And I was really commenting more as "me" than as a moderator. We don't have an official rule about where threads can go as people talk.

It is kind of interesting to see the dueling AS logics at work, so it isn't totally irrelevant to parents. Did you say you are AS yourself? That actually caught me by surprise; I had assumed that AS who are religious tend to grow up it with it as part of their identity (non-forced, hopefully), like my son is. As long as the parents are a little loose with it, they seem to keep it. It's the rigid parents whose kids seem likely to cast it off. Just an impression, not tested scientifically.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 09 May 2009, 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dilemma, I wasn't addressing you particularly. I was talking about people who keep alternating pronouns and rationalizing their beliefs in order to not seem out-of-touch, though I should have addressed it less directly to Christians themselves and more to anyone generally speaking with regard to that religion.

You should have a little more faith in yourself, the human mind is a wonderful thing and you probobly could figure it out if you wanted too.

Why not? If he wants me to dedicate his life to him I insist on a good reason

Hmmm, this was not covered in my English classes... I guess what happens is that I'd use us and them and you'd fall under both "us" and "them", you wouldn't use either "us" or "them" and have to type a few extra letters to say "Science" and "Religion". Anyone got a special interest in English grammer, am I right?

That's a common misconception about theories, yes theories are not proven (they are sometimes disproven) but that's because the standards of proof used by scientists are so high its impossible to prove anything. Gravity isn't "proven"!

Anyway I said science was all about facts and I stick with that, theories might not be proven but they're a step down the road of factfinding, quite a lot of them are close enough to call them facts in an informal debate like this.

Agreeing to disagree requires both sides to agree to disagree. I rather suspect science won't agree to disagree and instead would insist that religion finds some evidence or concedes the point. That's what I do.

Ironically that is the exact reason I do generalise, there are too many views and beliefs to have a meaningful debate unless you generalise (without making this a full time job)


It has, but that's an accident not a deliberate attempt to improve it.


This is the important part of your mini-essay, the idea that something is perfect by definition means that it dose not need improvement. And I just cannot bring myself to follow anything that isn't trying to improve itself.


If your talking about me, I'm Athiest. I'm aloud to change my beliefs anytime I want



Logic is just a formal way of thinking to get accurate conclusions from your starting premise, nothing more. That your sun can logically decide that "God is Science" just means he's useing a different starting premise to me.