is christianity a religion for neurotypicals?

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Speaking generally, I've felt for a long time that I don't really feel at home on this planet. That's a common enough feeling among aspies that this group is called Wrong Planet.

Given that this planet, or rather, world is not for me, then when I found out about another world (call it the Other world, or the world of the spirit, for example) then I figured - maybe that's where I should turn my attention rather than continually smacking my head against the same obstacles here. (By other world, I don't mean the next life, but simply the spiritual aspect of existence - God, angels good and bad, grace, sin, love, life, death, etc. These are immaterial realities, but are not abstractions.)

Of course, one has to live in this world, survive somehow, but it's not an either-or situation. Some churches tend to be more oriented towards this world, and some towards the other world. My personal preference is for the latter.

1. No religion or belief system is "for NTs" or "for people on the spectrum".

2. Most religions are sectarian, so there is no "one size fits all" approach.

3. My main issue is that the extreme, austere forms of religions are too involved in politics, and only focused on controlling how, when, and with whom we can have sex with, and not on the humanitarian aspects of the faith.

Yes, yes, and.yes!

I think it isn't compatible with the brute rationality of autistics. What you say is literally doublethink. How did God create the world 4000 years ago if there are fossils millions of years old? and many many other clashings of faith and reason.

As a gut reaction I tend to agree with that, and I have difficulty understanding how Aspies, who are usually very logical, can buy into religion at all. Practically everything I see from religionists seems either irrational, dogmatic, incorrect, or just incomprehensible to me.

Yet some Aspies are religious. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that upbringing is the strongest predictor of religiosity - i.e. many people accept the existence of deities because in their formative years they were raised by people who constantly insisted certain things about the matter and it becomes too ingrained to shake off in the light of reason.

There are also one or two evolutionary theories about how the human race came to be religious - e.g. there's said to be a natural tendency to assume events are produced by the agency of some being or other, which (it's said) helped primitive people to survive. And I read a theory that the team that got to the (?)North Pole first beat the competition because that team was religious - they performed certain religious rituals together which served as a binding force that kept the team together and gave them a degree of psychological comfort. The notion that success can only be attained by a strong, rational grasp of the truth might not be quite correct. Sometimes people can get the right result via the wrong reasons. So for example, the person who somehow believes they have a powerful friend in the sky might perform more confidently than a person who has no such belief.

I've been pretty rational since as far back as I can remember, and there was a time when I thought rational was all that I was, but eventually I noticed that I'm also driven by emotion, at least to some extent. Not that I'm religious.

Personally I like religions because they offer a structure to the universe. Remember, one of the autistc traits is a need for control and structure. Religion is a structured conceptualization of everything. I find comfort in that. Wether I buy into the specifics is another thing.

I have to agree. According to Temple Grandin, 'pattern thinking' is one of the main types of thinking found in Aspies. Religions vary, of course, but especially in more traditional ones, you will find plenty, visually, musically, liturgically, that falls into patterns, not to mention that symbolism (the heart and soul of religious expression) is very much a system of interrelationships.

For those interested in the psychology of autism, there's an interesting article here showing the three main types of thinking:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017 ... 8dc51c221e

This is a great comment and basically how I see it. I was raised Christian and went to church as a child, but my naturally rejected the premise. Even as a small child I rejected Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny etc, and God to me was in that category. I've also rejected astrology, the idea that there are ghosts, etc. You see where I'm going with this. I rejected what couldn't be proven or didn't have any sort of compelling evidence to support it.

Science cannot explain everything, like certain sense phenomena. I can give religious people that. But the issue is that the concept of a benevolent God (that we're not supposed to see) becomes unfalsifiable and plays too much upon human emotion. It's evident that humans can be convinced of almost anything they want to believe given how our brains work.

Based on the statistics, it is mostly NTs everywhere, except maybe on Wrongplanet.

Gap theory can help explain both things. God first created the world millions of years ago, when the dinosaurs and such lived, and then the world was recreated after some destructive event, which is where modern humans come in.

I'm going to agree with the premise to this extent - if you're already the way the bible tells you that you should be, things don't go well in life, and you try to become 'more' that way hoping that it'll finally bring you blessings and you'll be doing life right in Gods eyes, it'll just get worse - and it'll get worse as people effectively mug and stomp on you for showing 'difference' or 'weakness'.

What I take away from that is if you're already very base, Machiavellian, Darwinian, etc. some of what's in Christianity can take the edges off, socialize you better, and make your life better. Those people are... I'm going to use left of center in the sense of the Ahrimanic / Luciferic spectrum, if someone's already left of center on that map Christianity pulls them rightward. If you're already right of center on that map and Christianity pulls you more toward the pillar of mercy, you're almost becoming a new age fluff bunny and you'll get bounced on your head for that, ie. the moment the Luciferic shows up and says 'Now now... you're beautiful and wonderful just the way you are, especially if you're a good little boy/girl meek and mild', Ahriman's right around the corner waiting for Lucifer to leave to then smack your face into the ground and take your lunch money and Mom, Mary, Isis, or the Ashtar Command / Federation of Light are nowhere to be seen when that goes down - you're on your own to eat that lesson.

Realizing that I actually took up a Draconian mystical path (Temple of Ascending Flame) because if I'm right of center I need leftward pull to get on center.

So for a lot of aspies, especially for those who are too Platonist, wholesome, or priestly by nature, probably best for them to get into Thelema, Draconian path, things like that to even out the edges. Obviously if you have deep eschatological concerns with that idea by all means no need to take it up, it's just what I've come to observe - ie. the world is Darwinian and part of what you have to do is do the self-improvement walk *while* not failing the Darwinian walk.

I was talking to someone, an NT who's agnostic. He's an intelligent person with a very high IQ, but he told me that he believes that there's a 50/50 chance that an afterlife exists. I said I disagree, and he asked 'why?', stating there's no proof both ways and he brought up quantum entanglement, and I said I'd look into it and if it provides a compelling case I would keep it in mind.

I responded that I can't picture any scenario where it exists because not only is there no clear evidence but there's no strong supportive evidence either. Of course one could argue that science can't prove everything which is true but I think the issue is when emotions get in the way reason often gets discarded.

My point was that if something can't be proven or disproven to any extent whatsoever then it's unfalsifiable. But if you can provide supporting evidence that suggests that something is possible when incontrovertible evidence is lacking then it's at least worth consideration because it's rational to consider something with supporting evidence and rational judgment.

For instance in criminal trials we have juries that determine the outcomes of a court case based on reason. Both the defense and prosecution provide their cases, and rational judgment is supposed to help the jury decide whether or not the defense is guilty or innocent. Emotions are supposed to be discarded as much as possible and reason is supposed to take precedence.

Whether or not supportive evidence even exists to prove there is a God in the first place is not something I could comment on because I'm not very educated on the topic but either way I think people, autistic and neurotypical are very often caught up in emotions when it comes to religion, philosophy, politics and so on.

It's just part of being human. I'm simply of the belief that if strong supporting evidence hasn't yet been presented to me I struggle to believe in it in the meantime, but if in the future I discover new compelling information that could change my perspective I would be open to it without protest because I'm interested in the truth, not what I want to be true.

Last edited by FlaminPika on 18 Mar 2023, 10:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Christian here, possibly converting Catholic. Religion is for everyone, even if common practices might have been influenced unintentionally for specific groups or neurotypes. (Or even if straight-up discrimination developed somewhere along the way. Ya gal here is very religious but also very much queer.)

I actually quite like praying the rosary, I like handling something physical while praying. I think it's helpful.

Using pure logic, deduction and objective reason its likely we will have no sentient memory even if there is an afterlife. Our memories are tied to this organic body.

It is one of the religions for neurotypicals. But it's not the only one.

Would be interesting to poll how many aspies on WP are religious? from those who post here regularly I think it's most.