Aspies and Non-Traditional Spiritual Pathways

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Is there some connection between having Asperger's and one's religious orientation? I took a look at Aspieaffection.com and noticed a large percentage of people who are either atheist/agnostic or spiritual but not religious. It almost seems like that Aspies in general (as a group) have a much stronger orientation towards non-traditional spiritual pathways than NTs. Speaking for myself, I have been on and off in the Rosicrucians(AMORC). For some reason, I feel more connected on a non-traditional pathway rather than conventional religion. I think prayer is intuitive and through your mind directly to God rather than conventional prayer. I just don't think that with the way life goes for Aspies that conventional mainstream religion is a very good fit.

Aye, aspies seemed to be divided in two major groups.

Spirtual Atheists and Hard Line Atheists (Dawkinites as I like to call them) The other third seems to be dominated by pagans of various sort with a very minor showing of Christans and Judaism.

Thats because your religeon is based verry strongly on where you were raised and who by.
Aspies are more prone to ask the 'whys' and therefore more likely to stray from an 'inherited' (in a way) religeon thats incompatible with the person than most would.
Granted some of us when we do find something become verry hardline on it whether it be atheism or christianity. (or whatever)
Thats only some though.

An aspie by definition is anti-tradition. All the mental structures such as culture, religion, traditions, these are primarily NT structures. Some aspies follow them because they were brought up being taught to emulate NT behavior, but I'd venture to say a good portion of real aspies don't fall into these mind traps. At some point intellect progresses one beyond such limited boundaries. And autism is by clinical definition a trade-off, intellect for social ability/motor skills. One of the definative characteristics of autism is a lack of "theory of mind". Theory of mind is just perceptive mental limitations.

traditions are often nothing more than learned ignorance as well. Alot of times people cling to negative traditions as a moral structure, and do not question the moral implications of their traditions. They'll defend it just because "it's the way we've done things for years" instead of saying "well for years we've done wrong to so and so, lets let today be a new day".

A long long time ago I was thrown out of Sunday School because I asked too many awkward questions. Because I got into the martial arts I'm now a member of the Shinto faith.

Ed Almos

When I was a little kid in Barrington, I never liked going to church on Sundays. I wanted to go down to the pond and catch waterbugs and goldfish and turtles instead.

Check out The Stages of Spiritual Growth.