How Many Friends Do You Have

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This is a hard question to answer but I answered 1. This is the only friend that I know that I can call anytime and she cares. We haven't seen each other for several years though. I might have 2 friends since I have a friend that contacts me if I'm in the neighbourhood. But we live so far from each other so I see her about 2 times a year. I'm starting to feel that I'm not sure if she just calls me because she feels bad if she doesn't though.

Otherwise I only have some friends in online games.

I like this thread a lot, it's interesting.

In fact it's got me thinking that maybe the reason why we don't have many (if any) friends is because we recognise the difference between friends and acquaintances.

Please excuse my punctuation guys.x

That’s kind of interesting. I’m not what you could call a Bible Thumper either and yet I have strong yet unique religious views. At the same time I see each individual’s own views as valid for himself and would never dream of expecting others to share my own personal views. I only ask the same respect from others, including the church. However, the evangelicals have routinely turned the word “Christian” into a dirty word synonymous with hate and intolerance, which is not all all what Christ taught. Personally I see religion as a set of very individual views that are unique to each person and that should not be altered by others. To me this is the most evil thing in this world, but that is only my view. Take a look at the scene from the movie Conan the Barbarian in which Conan and the archer each boast of the superiority of their pagan gods. They only boast about them but do not try to convert each other to their own beliefs.

I see a huge difference between the church and the various religious characters on which each is centered, in this case Christ. Christ really did have his act together and his teachings are what I believe in, plus a little bit more such as respect for the inanimate resources of this world. The church came along several hundred years later and is of human origin, originally as an effort to consolidate his teachings as one account for posterity, beginning at Nicaea. As such it was a commendable effort, but being of human origin it was flawed by human shortcomings in forcing their own human opinion and interpretation on everybody else who also valued Christ’s teachings. As such it led to the mega-pastors who attempt to place their words in the mouths of God and Christ as representing what they intended. To me that is pure evil and represents the antithesis of what Christ taught. It can be summed up in the single word of “hubris”, which lies beneath all such behaviors. The Catholics believe that pride is the most serious of the seven deadly sins for which there is no forgiveness because it is the basis of all the rest. But there are both good and bad aspects of pride. Hubris is the word defining that bad aspect. Additionally there is the church’s effort to lay claim of ownership on the concept of marriage, which to me is a farce. The concept of love as a basis of marriage has only come about within the last few hundred years, of which I was unaware until l recently read about it on Wikipedia and through other Google searches on the topic. Going back to ancient times 5000 years ago, marriage was a power brokering arrangement to serve as an alliance between families for even greater power through that alliance with no choice by the couples involved. This was still true in Christ’s time during which the wife was considered to be property rather than an equal. This has only changed to incorporate love, respect and equality in recent times. So the church never did originate the concept… only the ceremony of excess, which Christ never taught.

Once again, I don’t expect anybody to share my views and would never suggest it, but you could probably call me a pantheist and a “Sermon on the Mountist”. I believe in respect not only for humans but also for lesser beings and the environment of the universe we live in. I don’t see God as a willful being (an interpretation that might be expected from humans) but as a process by which everything is conducted (a set of physical or mathematical rules you might say). I think it is possible that the nature of God might lie in the mathematical concept of string theory which determines the physical laws of all of the possible multiple parallel universes and not only our own. Or maybe there is some concept beyond string theory that dictates how string theory itself operates. Nobody will ever know until we get there, if even then. Maybe you have heard the stories of near death experiences and of being shown a time-independent panorama of ones own life along with being caused to feel the impact we have had on others and the ways they have been made to feel both good and bad by our own behavior in life. I believe that this IS the judgment (or maybe some preliminary to it) and that we are caused to judge our own behavior during life based on the way it has made others feel rather than being judged by some other willful being. There is so much more to see if a person only opens up his mind and sheds the physical limitations imposed by the church’s traditions and views. These are only human in origin. The church does indeed have a much needed and significant role both in furthering these teachings while remaining truly humble about it and in fostering compassion for people who need some kind of help but it should not represent itself as God’s proxy because it too is only human. I see Christ as being well-attuned to those behaviors that lend themselves to better outcomes in the next world. I can live without most of the Bible as only a relevant collection of inspired poetic feelings and a good historical account of ancient events. However I cannot live without the Sermon on the Mount, which to me has served as a guidebook to life ever since my mom first showed it to me when I was 8 or 9 years old. Matthew was a tax collector and as such would have been a stickler for accurate detail, so to me his account of Christ’s teachings was probably the most accurate and least biased. I also happen to believe in reincarnation but not in the same immediate sense as the Buddhists do (I believe the soul takes a time out). So I think it might be possible that the various central religious figures of each of the world’s religions might have been different incarnations of the same good soul. I also have mixed feelings about the concepts of the Trinity and Christ’s deity but consider them both to be irrelevant theological concerns that the church imposes as a definition of Christianity rather than Christ’s teachings itself. Humans and NTs in particular do seem to have a need to look for heroes in their midst. Needless to say my views are not exactly what the church advocates.

Some scholars have suggested that Christ might have been autistic because his teachings are so similar to the concerns that come with autism. This is usually scoffed at and immediately dismissed here on WP because it was so long ago that it can never be proven one way or another. I have mixed views (and will not go into that) but the parallels between his teachings and our autistic sensitivities seem to be a little bit more than coincidence to me.

The bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with being a Christian, only in the way the concept has been corrupted over the years. The same is also true with all other religions (including atheism and agnosticism), which to me are equally as valid as each other.



I am the same on both points. There’s nothing wrong with strong opinions, indeed this is a characteristic of Aspergers. However I try to avoid the urge to correct people (which comes from our focus on detail) because this is judgmental and places oneself above others. We are only human after all.

Last edited by TTRSage on 12 Oct 2017, 6:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

At this point in my life I honestly think I only have one truly good deep friendship. If a real friend is someone who has taken the time, thought and trouble to actually understand you, and still like you; "get" where you're coming from instead of miss your point a lot; care about what happens to you, and is there for you in times of trouble or worry, and vice versa on your part too for them, then I have just one friend.

Then I have three other people who I think care about me and I them, but I can't confide as much to them as I do to my one best friend.

Then beyond those four people, I have a friend I can confide in quite a bit, and we are there for each other to a small degree, but I am often frustrated at how little this person even actually knows me, despite that we've known each other for six years now.

Beyond this, there are several acquaintances who I know well enough to be on a "have a chat" basis, but I'm not close enough to them to even know their phone number or where they live, let alone for us to be there for each other in life. I find these the least satisfying and the most frustrating.