Cannot grasp the concept of faith....could it be my AS?

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You seem to be struggling to make faith make sense, and you do that by obfuscation. You imply that I can't understand it, or that there are hidden dimensions to it, or that I'm living in a flat world that lacks the depth which believers are granted. I think it's far more likely that there is simply nothing to it except a childish wish to live in a magical world. Or a mental illness of some sort.

sorry, babe---there are different dimensions and modalities to human experience....this is not to imply that any of it is ultimately true or that all of it has a basis in physical reality so is not delusional.

AS has nothing to do with grasping the concept of faith. Faith is a spiritual matter. AS is not. The supernatural realm is incomprehensible by natural means. Faith is a gift. It can't be earned. It's not something that's humanly possible to have without God first providing it.

People who are unspiritual don’t accept the things from God’s Spirit. They are foolishness to them and can’t be understood, because they can only be comprehended in a spiritual way. - 1 Corinthians 2:14

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. - Ephesians 2:8

Last edited by faithfilly on 07 Oct 2013, 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

but THIS aspie [moi] IS spiritual.

This requires a further comment, AspE.. It wasn't about ME being flattered by her. It was about me accepting what she felt she had to give from her angle. I am looking at things differently from you. You are putting too much context into it. Actually it was a very simple experience.

She first was telling me she just came back from a nun's funeral in another state quite far away.. It must have been very important to her if she traveled so far. And I was telling her I got these calls and always was so happy to receive them. (All the people who call are older women and in a state of serenity and calm which translates over the phone). What does heaven mean to her? Surely something quite different than it might to me. I am a hard-core reality based religious scholar, but I do not have to tell her that. Just accept into my heart the gift she had to offer at that time, and it was transformational. She was in a profound state when she called me. Going to that nun's funeral was probably almost like going to a spiritual retreat. Everything was condensed and focused from one angle which created an affect, and since these people were Roman Catholic, and probably a lot of them older themselves and at a funeral of a nun, they were thinking very much of heaven. That is an interesting word. Did you ever think of what it could mean in terms of the exact formation of the word? No, of course not. Even Roman Catholics and any kind of Christians probably do not think of that. That just accept the word and attribute whatever meaning they want to it, according to their own context.

But the word itself is very interesting in terms of its formation.

I understand what you mean, that she thought she was being kind. If I wanted to be polite and not offend anyone I would probably accept it in that context too. But they should think about what they are saying. If we look at the ten commandments, I bet most of us wouldn't hold up. It's not just doing bad deeds, it's even thinking about them. So what she is really doing is making a threat which reinforces the cosmic thought police. Heaven in Christianity has a corollary, no less important. The Devil is real to these people, and he is the personification of independent thinking. We don't like to think of little old ladies as torturers, but their seemingly innocuous statements hold the echo of the inquisition. And their belief that one should not suffer a witch to live is alive and well in parts of Africa. Nuns are witches too, just ones that play for a different team.

AspE, I agree, but the problem, or should I say situation, is more complex than you make it. I will write more on this another time.

I understand. My piano teacher considered herself a Christian and also practiced transcendental meditation, floating around the world at night and talking to the dead (allegedly). It wasn't a deal breaker in terms of our relationship, she was an awesome person who in her 90's would still walk 10 miles to the mall to teach (all the time reading from a book of Latin that she was trying to teach herself), in plastic shoes. Was she a little nutty? Sure, but it gave her character.

AspE, I appreciate your trying to communicate and make a connection here, but let's not skip steps. This thread is about having faith. Human beings are struggling with nihilism. That is a fact of the human condition Faith means something different to me than you. Like I wrote, it is the bridge between two different dimensions. Plus "heaven" means something different to me. I experienced her state and I liked it a LOT, though imo the concept even of heaven on earth is kind of a simplistic form of transcendentalism. But how she got to this heaven experience is complex. How America got to being The United States is by killing indigenous people and taking their land, and also by abducting Africans and forcing them to do a lot of the work..Does this mean a person cannot go into a theater and enjoy a movie or enjoy walking down the street on land that was once owned by Indians? Imo you are kind of a status quo guy who has a bug up your b--t about religion.

Yes, this woman is an authoritarian and really quite ignorant, but what does this mean? She doesn't even know she is these things, anyway, so in this sense she is kind of innocent. So I cannot appreciate "heaven" (on earth:-) and participate in the joy of this with her? Give me a break. Anyway, to you it is just a word about something that is fake, but to me it is a multidimensional sensory experience, though on a spiritual level kind of unsophisticated.

Anyway, stay tuned, as now I am going after the other side:-)

It could be your Aspergers. When you have Aspergers you tend to think more logically and you have a hard time expressing empathy and stuff so not having faith can be tied to Aspergers. I'm not saying that all people with Aspergers are non-religious.

I think in some ways it's okay to be religious. I mean back in the middle ages life was pretty tough and people needed someone to look up to, to promise a better life in the future etc... For many people that person was a God. Someone who promised eternal life and seeing loved ones again etc... Maybe thats why it appeals to so many people.

I think we can have all the poetry, beauty, and transcendent feelings without the trappings of religion, which are anachronistic, regressive, and harmful to society. You yourself have to redefine these terms and interpret them liberally to make them meaningful. What if humanity started over with no knowledge of the past? Would we still be having these same spiritual experiences? I think so.

In the middle ages, the church held all sorts of necessary responsibilities that are now the task of secular government. As a result of social democracy, people are more likely to abandon religion. Just as we have grown as a society, we need to grow up personally, and leave the idea of a comforting father figure in the sky behind. I reject the idea that my dislike of faith is the result of Aspergers. It's more that I want hope for the future, and religion is an impediment to change. We will never progress as a species with the chains of religion around our necks. It's more that religion has been and still is, the cause of many violent atrocities. Even in our own US congress, we have idiots like Michelle Bachmann who doesn't care that the government is shut down because she thinks the f*****g end times are here. That's crazy. Why would anyone care about improving society if it's all just a sideshow on the road to Armageddon?

So when the kindly geriatric good witch deigned to allow you in thought to enter her fantasy after-hours death party, did she have any idea what she was saying? Does she also think it's all interpretive, or is she one of the stupid ones who take it literally? ...like the current Pope...

Pope Francis takes the Gospel warnings against Satan very literally, seeing the modern tendency to write the devil off as a kind of mythical expression or literary fiction as a kind of victory for evil's influence in the world.

This is a modern religious authority, not a relic of the past. To me religion or spirituality, whatever you want to call it, is just superstition, a con game, it is merely the selfish pursuit of pleasure. There is nothing you can do, no method, no religion, no practice, that will enlighten or save you. If it sounds like I'm talking with authority it's because I went down that path, but something happened, a kind of insight, something it would not even be appropriate at this time to go into. You can dismiss me as silly or inexperienced, I don't care, but this isn't my first time to the party. It's been 30 years since I first picked up a book about Zen in the local library. It's the only religion I've heard about which acknowledges that to succeed at it is to abandon it. It was 10 years before I understood what that meant. But don't listen to me. It will create an unnecessary disturbance in you. It will only intensify the neurotic situation you are already caught in. Having taken for granted the validity of all this holy stuff, having never questioned, much less broken away from it, you can't accept what I'm saying, nothing will penetrate your defenses, religious ideas are your bulletproof coat, your spiritual Snuggie™. Sweet dreams.

This reminds me of your argument.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vBZEUlwO0s[/youtube]