Aspies and religion

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DW_a_mom, thanks for your response I appreciate it being left in here and will do my best to tie into parenting when i can

It is interesting isn't it!

I'm "self diagnosed" i was originally looking at AS out of curiosity (my daughter was too young for me to have any real suspicions of it yet, but i had it in the back of my mind) the more i read the more i started to understand myself, it was an emotional realization to FINALLY understand WHY i was so different (words that are/were commonly used to describe me: different, unique, melancholic, unusual, "Emma Dilemma" was a nickname as a kid) why i could never make friends and if i did i could never keep them, i figured it had to be something with me (i moved a lot growing up so there were plenty of new people who could have befriended me, i was the only common denominator) but i couldn't figure out why i was so unlikeable, i WANTED friends, but didn't really know how to go about getting friends. I've always been really socially awkward/anxious/something (i still am and still have very very few friends, one that is close and others who i never see/speak with) as a kid i used to enjoy watching the other kids and teaching them (i was really advanced, reading books by 4, i was helping the teacher teach the 5 year olds maths that year as well before i even started school ) but i preferred to be alone with my thoughts or the company of adults if i couldnt be alone. I also cried constantly for no reason (sometimes i'd just climb onto my mum and sob and when she asked me why i didn't know why) i have always had a pronounced sense of empathy which i know is not typical of aspies, but i would cry if another kid was getting a growling, felt sorry for inanimate objects etc. i've also always had very strong interests and attachments to things, strong convictions, sensitivities to things etc. i was once called "quietly independent" by a teacher, which i think sums it up fairly well, i'm quiet and passive but VERY strongly believe what i believe and am usually against the grain with it. Anyhow, i'm self diagnosed but i have little doubt because of family history and self history. Sorry, that was long.

About the religion thing, my parents were somewhat anti organized religion but were also very spiritual. I can remember at age 4 we lived by the beach and as mentioned, i spent a lot of time alone and quiet, i thought a LOT and could spend hours with my thoughts even from such a young age. I would think a lot about how small we were, the size of the world (huge), our significance (or lack there of) etc. i remember looking at the ocean and thinking about how small we were. I once thought maybe we were toys (i was 4 remember LOL) and a giant decided what we did and the ocean was his bathroom sink, night time was when he was finished playing with us and put us in his pocket. I wonder if those early thoughts have anything to do with my (not much later) search for religion and ultimately religious life. I don't think my being religious had much to do with anyone else, it was sort of my own idea and i always knew and always said i would find other people who believed what i did, i was told to be happy with what i believed in that i didn't need to have a religion to believe what i believed, but i was always supported in my beliefs and search (except when i became mormon, mum wasn't too pleased about that but she never teried to stand in my way or put me down for anything) I wanted it and knew i would find something that would expand on what i already knew (my own ideas/understanding) and would detail the kind of life i should live based on that. It's funny to look back on those thoughts in relation to my life now.




Well, like i said, i don't UNDERestimate the human mind, i know it sounds like i do, but i'm trying to illustrate the limitations of our understanding of things WAY bigger than us and way outside our world that we couldn't even really begin to imagine. I could theorize, but i wouldn't know for sure unless the Creator decided to explain it. I'd have to look up some detailed discussions on this by scholars to know exactly how much we already know and go from there. I prefer to just accept it as it is and understand it the way i understand it, it'll be different i'm sure even from the next muslim, much more so from the next athiest But i will look up some scholarly discussions on this (although they are not always as informative as i like them to be) i'm sure you're not the first to ask this question.


Ask Him I personally think it has something to do with the journey WE go on and the questions WE ask. The Creator doesn't NEED us, we need Him (for provision, guidence, to help us understand why we're here etc.) a common theme in human existence has been to try to find out WHY we are here, WHAT our purpose is, WHAT the purpose of life is. MAYBE the Creator created us in a certain way, with certain characteristics, so that we would search and ask and wonder and look up and look for the Creator.

I hope that in the next life we'll know that (or those of us who want to know will know)


I think it matters, well... it matters to me. I'm still a firm believer in science complimenting religion (and vice versa) i think if someone believes in religion (specifically Islam, i don't speak for anything else) science will strengthen their faith (as long as it's looked at with a grain of salt and one has the strength of faith to believe that first) especially if you look at the parts of the Qur'an and the science behind it.

This is an interesting website, you might be interested in as it relates to the Qur'an and Science complimenting each other http://www.scienceinquran.com/creation_phenomena.html (there is more information but i just read through that first list, unfortunately he doesn't give the direct Quotes from the Qur'an but if you read the full PDF text it does give the references)


Yes you're right. So religion (i.e. islam) is not willing to change, and science is not willing to accept religious theories Two hardheaded brothers (or sisters, if you want )


Agreed.


I wish i had more time to ponder this and come up with more detailed thoughts. But here's what came to mind now anyway (as im cooking and taking care of 2 little kids)

Religion, as i see it, is guidence, so if it were to keep changing and "improving" itself as time goes on. It would be men who were doing it, who are imperfect, who would mess up the balance that the Creator created in the religion by adding their own thoughts/desires into it. There would be no guidence in it if it kept changing, it would change with you and you'd end up making it up as you went along which would defeat the purpose of it being a guidence. Islam teaches us about the past, something that CAN be improved on, stories of nations who were destroyed because of their downfalls, Pharoah was worshipped by his people, and they practiced magic, they perished in the red sea (there is speculation that it is Ramses, but i'm not sure if we know which Pharoah is the one in the story), Moses' people worshipped a golden calf (greed?) and they were exiled, with Lot's people there was widespread homosexuality, they perished (the dead sea is said to be where their town once was, the story is that the Angel Gabriel lifted the town and slammed it into the ground (after the people were warned by Lot (a prophet) to change their ways and they mocked him, th epeople are always sent warners before they are punished) hence, the dead sea being the lowest place on earth) ... there are several nations like this described and yes the stories are simplified, but there are relics that God says in the Qur'an He preserved as signs for us so we won't forget what became of those people (Noahs arc, egyptian relics, dead sea, there's a nation, i can't remember the story but they built their city in the sides of rocks (like in Petra) and those still exist as well.. it might BE petra but i'm not sure)

Also it gives us "facts" (according to us who believe in it anyway) about creation, the universe, the world we live in... ourselves (The Qur'an says that we have signs all around us and within ourselves i.e the human body and mind) and tells what is to come, which can't be improved on because it is yet to be.



WurdBendur, ahh i see, well, i don't disagree with you entirely anyway, with all due respect to my cousins in faith.

I was raised Roman Catholic until I was about 9, then my dad tried to teach us about Mormonism (I ran screaming from both).
My stepmom was a very odd New-Ager with a focus on Tibetan teachings. About this time my real mom became a Dianic Wiccan, something she tried to teach me about, but at the time I despised the idea of Gods in general. Having the local Bible Club harrass me at school wasn't making the case for their commandment of love, and still doesn't. To this day, I have a passionate hatred for "Cardboard Christians" as I call them, and I trust no one who comes to my door with a book in their hand (unless it's the mailman with my Amazon order!).

I have become a proud Pagan, and while I follow no established Tradition, I still have room for the Divine in my life.
I have my own moral code, and I use it to serve my community the best I can. I make charms, read Tarot, bless their homes, and cast spells to protect their children (all with permission, of course!). I have many Gods, and I serve them all with a joy and love that I never felt in any church. I did not choose this path out of rebellion or anger; I chose it because it just feels right. The best thing this has done for me is to restore my faith in myself over all. I never had any respect for myself when I was in church; I was always to blame for everything awful in my life, I was never "good enough", and I was going to burn in hell from day one no matter what I did. I just couldn't take anymore "Shut up, you're a Woman" from the Book and pulpits.
I serve my Queen, but NEVER as a beaten slave.

I would never force my kids (if I ever have any) to follow my ways, or even see me do any rituals unless they wanted to.
I would have to let them find their own path, and I would still love them no matter what they chose. I wouldn't allow them to preach to anyone in my house, but they could still be what they liked.

I hope this ramble made sense.

Religion is pretty black and white, in fact when I was younger, I hated liberal religious people because they are the biggest hypocrites ever.

Christianity for instance makes no sense if death and sin always existed through evolution, so for "christians" that take the bible mythologically, then it makes nosense to believe in it. Since to the liberal christian it's all just stories and myths which undermines the whole point of sin and death to begin with.

But besides that, it makes no sense because of the evidence. There are too many logical errors in religions to ever be considered works of perfect beings.

Last edited by ZakFiend on 22 May 2009, 8:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

What if OUR (or your) logic is flawed? What if something that is logical to you is not logical to someone else? What if you actually don't know all about every religion to make a statement like that?

If religion were black and white then everyone would understand it the same way. If logic were black and white, then there'd be no debate.

It isn't, first of all because you're not being specific. Give me a claim and I will debunk it. You're purposely avoiding saying anything specific, bringing up red herrings like "what if our logic/your logic is flawed?" . But no statement was offered or being compared, therefore there was nothing for you to base your argument on.

First of all true *logic* can never be flawed, because when something exists, it is both EXISTING and TRUE at the same time, you can't have a really existing sun that 's not existing truly or that it is not true(that it exists).

If I am god and say something that is not true, but I claim to be *omniscient* that is a contradiction, a non truth. Therefore: That particular god contradicts one of his own traits, therefore disqualifying him/her as god. It is that simple, most people just live in denial because they can't imagine a world without an afterlife/religion/god, etc because they are powerless and will eventually get old and die.

I find religion easy to accept once you've done the research into it and discovered its truth. Place names given in the Bible still exist. Historical accounts of the crucification exist. Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts corroborate when translated, and the Dead Sea Scrolls back them up. Why would anyone agrandize just another prophet among thousands of them unless the prophet in question was truly extraordinary?

Aside from all that, I have read the Bible cover to cover many times and have come to the conclusion that everything mentioned it all fits together. Christianity works for me, and I have no problem believing in it.

Your looking at it backwards, if there are thousands of prophets then just by chance at least one of them would be agrandized.

And place names are the same, is that really surprising? the author would have to be a complete idiot to get that wrong. But there is other historical evidence that's a bit less solid like Jesus' birth. Luke and Mathew disagree entirely on that, Herod (king who ordered the slaughter of all babies* in Matthew) died a few years before the census (the reason Mary & Joseph went to Bethleham in Luke).

* Current thinking from historians: never happened


Logic is black and white, or rather True and False. The thing about logic is that it dosn't say if your arguments are right, just if they're structured properly.

What i meant was, what seems logical to you, might not seem to me, and vice versa. To me, belief in God seems logical and obvious. To you, it seems illogical and unfounded. It's a case of how i understand reality vs. how you understand reality, it's not the same for any 2 people. I'm always fascinated by the fact that 2 people can look at the exact same flower and see 2 completely different things. Reality is all about perspective and individual understanding IMHO especially for AS people.

ZakFiend, you said:

When you say "religions" do you mean Christianity, Islam, Bhuddism, Paganism, Scientology, Judaism, hinduism, Bahai, Jehovas Witness, Mormanism, Hare Krishna, Karbala ... or one of the many sub sects of all the many religions. All have very very vast and different belief systems (and often it's different down to the individual level) you can't question the logics of one religion and think you've questioned all of them. And if you chose but one of the many religions, you'd still have to go through the sects and if you chose but one of the sects you'd still find different perspectives from one person to another and then you have to choose the illogical errors and bring them up. It's you that's not being specific here.

At the end of the day, i'm not going to debate what I believe in vs. what you believe because even scholars on both sides can't settle that one. Belief is a consequence of our environment, our interests, our perspective, our understanding, our research etc. and it's different and deeply personal for everyone. Noone can make umbrella statements about WHY someone believes what they do just like i can't make an umbrella statement about why people don't.


Denial about what? I don't think a second about my power over my life or getting old and dying. I actually don't think a lot about the future at all i think about how i live my life now and the consequence of that short and long term. I believe in God because i researched and researched and it made sense to me, things added up and voila i was Muslim!

God and Islam make sense to me, otherwise i wouldn't have searched and researched religion for a decade and eventually become a Muslim in the first place, to me, it's logical as opposed to Bahai and Mormonism which i don't find so much (i was an active part of both along the way) I don't understand Athiem, i was not raised in a family who believed in God, but there was never a time i can remember that i personally didn't believe in a single Creator.

I am a religious person. I also am a very logical person when I am not under extreme stress. I am not a scientist but I follow science journals very closely and science is one of my special interests. All that just to say I've viewed both sides as deeply as I know how to.

These are the things I have found.

There are a lot of wrong, contradictory, silly, and selfish ideas out there but people still stick to them even if they say the personally disagree with them. Sometimes they even cherish them, knowing that they're wrong, contradictory, silly, and selfish.

You can have all the facts, or evidence laid in front of people and some will choose to believe it and others will try to find a way around or even ignore the facts or evidence.

Very few people are listening to good sound theories because it conflicts with their world views. Many religious people think that they aren't allowed to discuss other ideas. Many evolutionists will discuss but not consider. This situation really should be unpalatable to both but it isn't considering the above.

Religious people should be talking about their religions if they really believe in them. Evolutionists shouldn't really care what other people think since all that's important is ensuring your races survival and passing down good genes (there are some exceptions to that, such as if what other people think will prevent either of the important conditions from happening). But the opposite is true in both cases.

The vast majority of religions and religious people ignore the source of their faith. - this being the Torah, Talmud, Bible or Koran. Not only is it individuals, it's entire religions that just flat out ignore what they are supposed to be based on. They even claim the source material is corrupted or inaccurate and then claim that they are infallible. That should be the other way around any religion that is willing to say "We need to make a correction, we humans have messed something up." is at least being honest.

Evolutionists are illogical. - They believe dogmatically in a theory that is untestable, namely that all life came from simpler organisms. It is also a theory that is so statistically unlikely it is a mathematical impossibility. Any arrangement of DNA that occurs randomly by mutation is in essence a mathematical probability equation. I will discuss this with someone who is willing to discuss math and not belief. Otherwise all any evolutionist I ever talked to says "I think it can happen". Mainly because they don't understand the vastness of that probabilities involved.

Evolutionists are persecuting people now with the same fearful mindset that lead the Roman Catholic Church to persecute Galileo Galilei. Usually one of religion's biggest sins in a Scientist's mind is now happening to hundreds of scientists and laymen alike in the name of Science. This is akin to Priests and Ministers blessing nations and troops on both sides of a war.

If you can't explain it you either don't have a sufficient world model your dealing with, you haven't been trained properly or your in the process of being trained. The first being most likely if you don't have all the answers.

Believing in God isn't illogical but most religions are which gives believing in God a bad name.

Plenty of sins on either side of the religion vs. evolution debate.

Oh please, biology is just about studying the facts. No one is saying that we should live our lives according to natural selection.

So fossil records don't count as testing? Mapping the genome dosn't count as testing? Just what dose count as "testing"?


Flip four fair coins, the odds of getting four heads is approximately 6%, the odds of four heads, or three heads or two heads or one head or all tails is 100%, I'm sure you can see how that relates to evolution, just remember that if you flip four coins your going to get something as a result.

P.S. evolution isn't random, its random mutations combined with non-random natural selection.

P.S2 The odds of apes evolving into man are far higher than the odds of amoeba's evolving into man.

P.S3 in an infinite universe/multiverse anything with a probability greater than 0% will occur, if you only look far enough. No idea if anything is infinite but it sure is big.

Oh I understand the vast probobilties involved, I also understand the reasons why it works despite that.

Habeas corpus. Or don't attack the scientific community.

Actually I've heard several prominent Evolutionist say we should live by natural selection, which is scary considering where eugenics got us.

If Automobiles fossilized instead of turning to rust, someone could get the impression that they evolved over the years. Similar design does not equal evolution. I've also never heard a satisfying explanation of punctuated evolution. I all sounds a lot like hand waving to me and "something happened here" kinda like on the religion side "God did it".

Mapping the genome is good science but again, similar design does not equal evolution.

As far as probability goes, are you suggesting that any string of DNA in any order will produce a living organism? That is what is suggested by saying that flipping four coins will get four heads, or three heads or two heads or one head or all tails. I do not believe that existing medical evidence or biology would hold up that theory.

Evolution is random, you just drop the results that don't work. You still have to go through each random result.

I would agree that the odds of apes evolving into man are far higher than the odds of amoeba's evolving into man. Are you saying that Apes were created and then evolved to man? I wouldn't think so from your previous posts.

Is the universe infinite? So far cosmologists have speculated that the universe is 13-14 billion light years across. There are theories of multiverses but there is no way to test those theories at present. Basing one's theory on another unprovable (at least for no) theory is illogical. For what can be proven, the universe does not appear infinite. To my knowledge there are 150 billion galaxies that are estimated to exist. In the milky way there are estimated to be 200-400 billion stars. It is estimated that there are 10 to the power of 21 stars in the universe. Thats a large large number, but it's not infinite. Anything else is taking things on faith because that is the current status of science fact. Now you have four possible permutations for every DNA molecule in genome. It's likely but not proven that not all genes have a purpose other than spaces in between coding sequences, so there is a lot of leeway there for junk sequences so all I count is the actual coding genes. I actually had to work pretty hard to find out what the probability of getting a human organism would require. I was informed by the figures about how similar our genome is to other animals. For example a chimp being only 1% different from a human tells me that if you get 1% of the genes wrong, at the very best you'll get a chimpanzee level organism. There are similar numbers for mice etc. I can't remember them at the moment. In the end I came up with numbers. I can't believe that evolutionary biologists haven't come up with similar numbers. If they have, I can't find them, so that means they they don't want to talk about them. They like to use "Oh the universe is very big" That's true, but by my calculations, not big enough for evolution.

I'll have to write more later. No time now.

I'm an atheist.

Oh really, name them.

That's because they pretty much are evolving. Natural selection (artificial selection?) takes place in the design floors and in the market: what sells what dosn't. Now they're actually writing computer programs that actually mimic evolution for designing stuff, they work.

No but a step by step progress from one design to the next, combined with experimental testing (Darwin himself used pidgins) showing that species can change over time makes a pretty compelling case.

Now your just nitpicking, punctuated evolution has nothing to do with weather evolution is real, just how it works.

No but finding the links between different species is good supporting evidence

You misunderstood, each combination of coins is a different genetically valid species: the point was that while humans, or any particular species, are extremely unlikely, the odds of *something* evolving are actually pretty good if you have a life supporting planet. Its not like invalid genetic combinations can evolve anyway, they'd never breed.

nope, but apes evolving from their ancestors isn't that unlikely and so on down the tree.

I wouldn't be surprised if they figure out a way sometime.

Not really, you just work from the most likely theory and if its wrong you disprove it. A LOT of physics is based on the higs boson and was untestable until the LHC was built.

Your looking at it as "humans or nothing", when you get to something as high up the evolutionary tree *everything is equally unlikely*, but something is going to evolve and it just so happened to be humans. The theory of evolution works weather it produces humans, apes or Vulcans.

Myers, Dawkins on several occasions, There's some poor guy that has brain cancer, I can't remember his name.

That's design, not Evolution. It has been rebranded as design evolution which I don't disagree with. Computer software that is designed to evolve is far different from software that isn't. Try randomly scrambling some of the bits on your hard drive running any OS and you won't be doing it any favors (even if you do it millions of times maybe even billions and an OS is tiny in complexity compared to biology). Actually evolutionary programs that are designed with the purpose of evolving are valid tools but they illustrate the point well. They don't correct for mutations the way our DNA does, they are initially made by an intelligence, they produce massive numbers of failed permutations despite being orders of magnitude simpler and they mutate at a rate that would kill any biological species.

In the end, Design Evolution is as much a hallmark of a intelligent creation process as it could be of evolution. My point is you can't point to an organism's similarity to another being proof or evidence of evolution. To me it is a absolutely valid method of Creation.

Actually no it doesn't. They're still pidgins. Dogs after millennia of selective pressure are still just genetically selected dogs. They're still the same species the same way pigmies and people with giantism are still Human. People with white skin and people with brown skin are still the same species. Suggesting that a pidgin that has different traits teased out of it is a different species is akin to espousing racism because the same criteria would apply to humans. All those pidgins are still reproductively compatible with pidgins.

On the contrary, thats the way it would have to work according to the fossil record. It is required for evolution to be a sound theory.

Another common misrepresentation of the facts. I disagree. The odds of something evolving are quite poor. At the basic life form level the probability is not as large as the improbability of a human but it is still quite large and not to be brushed off with "we only see such an improbable event because we're here to see it". And it doesn't matter, we are here to see it, so evolution is a statistical improbability. If we were discussing a simple organism on another planet I may entertain that thought but just because you may make it to the first stepping stone does not mean that you can easily jump the rest of the Niagara river.

Then you truly don't understand probability. Probability is the combination of permutations. If you separate them and get their probabilities you can't just say "oh each one of these are likely, the whole thing must be likely". Like a lottery ticket. The probability that you get one number right is one in ten (as long as they're not using letters of something). The chance of you winning the lottery is usually one in several hundred thousand or millions. Just because you got one or five numbers right, you didn't win.

An interesting flip-side to that is in an infinite multiverse there must be a God in one of them. It has to happen.

But no one argues if someone comes up with a theory that doesn't include it. They may like the Higgs Boson theory better but they respectfully disagree until the Higgs has been discovered or the alternate theory is somehow tested as valid.

Actually no, I'm not looking at humans or nothing. I'm looking at the probability of a human complexity organism arising by chance because I know that is going to be the rebuttal. However it is still valid to look at the unlikelihood of the human genome arising by chance because in your view it did and so therefore there is a probability to it. It is true that if your criteria is any sequence of DNA that would produce a organism that is capable of self awareness and intelligence on a human scale opens up the number of "winning" permutations by a degree, remember that we still share a significant portion of the same DNA as bacteria earthworms and mice all still vastly unlikely DNA strings.

In the fifties a very large and well funded project was undertaken to cause mutations in plants, relatively simple organisms. They went through generations of testing and in the end was a complete flop. Everything they did produced inferior offspring. Yes some of them had traits that seemed better to the scientists but they came with other traits that reduced their survivability. They couldn't breed the advantages in without the reduced survivability. They also couldn't produce a different species. All this with a relatively simple organism and vastly increased rates of mutation. That should be a perfect recipe for evolution but it didn't work. I wonder why they aren't still trying? Probably because they can't get it to work.

Did you know that organisms have as yet unknown mechanisms for repairing mutation? Plant breeders mutated a flowering plant so that the flowers would form but never open. The only way the plant could reproduce was by budding and therefore each plant was a clone. In several generations the plants were opening their flowers again. On testing, the plants had repaired their DNA somehow. Makes me think that evolution is even more difficult than we even know how to quantify.

Any time I look past the hand waving of "evolution happens easily" I look and see numbers and facts that show that it doesn't. The only thing I will say more on this is, do the math for yourself. Maybe my calculations are wrong! But no one has ever taken me up on the task. If you truly believe it, do the math. Being as generous as the math will allow me, the odds of a Human evolving is 1 in 10 to the power of 232 million against. Until someone shows me the math that says otherwise they don't have a leg to stand on in my view. Show me differently and we'll talk.

I've went from being Christian as a child to an Atheist as a 40 year old adult. This wasn't a quick change. My beliefs gradually changed over the years. I am curious how many other adults with AS are actually Atheist.

I've been surprised how many are actually theists. It seems that whatever conclusion folks come to, we've come to it quite logically.

By the way... to the mother whose son says God is science... he's actually made a profound philosophical point. That's very astute of him... he may explore that idea in more depth as he gets older. Science comes from a Latin word, to know... If God is God, then He is all knowledge, therefore your son has put his finger on a little thought of aspect of deity. I'm impressed!