Another 'Aspies & Religion' question

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One of the common characteristics of people with Asperger Syndrome is, as far as I understand it, a tendency to interpret language literally. Does this mean that people with Asperger Syndrome who are part of a religious tradition are more likely to have a literal and, dare I say it, fundamentalist approach to their tradition and religious texts? Are there many people with AS who take a more mystical approach to their faith and tradition?

Fascinating question. I have, as someone recently diagnosed with AS, wondered that myself. Judy Singer deals a bit with this subject about 2/3 down the page:

http://www.neurodiversity.com.au/

Personally, however, my approach to religious subjects has never been fundamentalist. As a kid, I tended to look at my religious texts mystically and metaphorically. Now, however, as an academic, a sociologist who specializes in religious studies, I focus on texts as narratives (stories) and as relative social constructions. Fundamentalist approaches seem to me as overly simplistic.

i wondered something similar on another thread after i had been saying perhaps gluten and casein food-opioids introduction into human diet just 14,000 years ago might have contributed to invention of religion (on thread " logical arguments for religion" on Religion, Politics etc), because some one replied that it might have had some effect but that it missed out elements; that opiates effect on people and their consequent state could not explain everything about religious beliefs and/or spirituality.
I can understand a partially fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible along the lines of saying that the forbidden fruit was wheat, for instance, because of the effect it had on people, and that persisting in eating it led to losing peace/paradise etc, and a partially mystical version in which there is a real "state" associated with religious experience; that of opioid effects on brain, and other physical components.
Is as close as i have come to religion except when chose deliberately to experiment with belief in God, ( cognitive approach!) and was surprised by real mental effect of doing this, as if made lots of extra space in head etc. Very odd. Unfortunately God took on life of his own and became increasingly repressive company so i stopped!!
So yes, am very curious too to hear what if anything makes up religion, apart from those things, for aspies. Is it impossible for an Aspie to have any other kind of experience of religion? Does aspie religion have anything to do with creating artificially the "loving kindness/empathy"/connection with/concern for others which NTs supposedly have naturally? I def think there is some special relationship between aspiedom and religion.

Last edited by ouinon on 25 Nov 2007, 12:26 pm, edited 4 times in total.

These are very difficult questions, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to provide anything of much value, however, I will say one thing: I think that, in part, I understand the mystical approach as being less concerned with explaining things away, and more concerned with being part of the living process itself. So, I wouldn't say that cognitive choices or chemical effects necissarily make religious faith invalid.

up until recently i thought religion was right no matter what. but then i started looking abit closer none of it makes sence or is factual. some things i have discoverd

jesus was not born on december 25, nobody knows the exact date
sunday is not the sabbath, saturday is. a catholic changed it
the christian symbol of the cross was origionally a pagan symbol of the zodiac

When I read the bible when I was younger, I did interpret the book literally, but I think part of that was what made it so boring to read because it just droned on, and on, and on, and said a bunch of stuff I considered to be strange--I tried to ignore them until I realized that believing in the bible wasn't worth it in my life. If Aspies read the bible literally, and came to the conclusion that it was a horrible text, perhaps that's what makes them so skeptical about it. Well, some of them.

IMO, one of the problems with fundamentalism is a tendency to treat the Bible as a unified document. For instance, in the Paltalk room I help operate, people frequently tell each other, "What's the matter with you? Haven't you read the Bible?" They then use proof-texting (throwing out verses) like projectile weapons.

Of course, there is no such thing as "the Bible." The Bible is a name for for several different compilations (canons) of texts (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Coptic, etc.). Leaving aside the Jewish canons, there are numerous canons accepted by the various Christianities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon

The amateurish "cross-referencing" approach, which treats "the Bible" as a single document (called "reification"), would not be accepted by academic religious scholars. Neither would "word studies" (using a concordance or lexicon), which take texts out of context, be seen as acceptable approaches to this body of literature.

Once people adopt reification, a method which disrespects individual textual differences, there will inevitably be differences in interpretation (depending on which verses people will choose to emphasize).

Therefore, there is no such thing as "the Bible." There are only diverse compilations of texts to which have been given that name.

Last edited by nominalist on 25 Nov 2007, 1:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Congratulations- you're on the right track! Keep digging for truth!!

oh i will be girl. i cant believe in just anything you know

I'm an atheist, or perhaps an agnostic. Religion doesn't seem real to me - it seems stupid, and can make me a little bit rude at times when people go on about their religion because I don't understand how intelligent people can talk about religion and then oftentimes do nothing to follow the teachings.

That is a very good and interesting question. For me, being a literal interpreter, I could not believe the things in the Bible actually happened. I believe any diety would be bound to similar physical laws as we are. Therefore, I sort of view the Bible as a collection of stories designed to be examples and little more. Of course, though I was raised Christian, I am now a Buddhist.

This is what led me out of Christianity, combined with what I see as universal problems I see in congregations. I was raised "evangelist" (Non-denominational Christian) and we were taught to interpret the Bible literally. We were both encouraged to read the Bible on our own and trust "authority" figures on its interpretation. Which, of course leads to debate, dissention and disillusionment. I knew married couples that had different interpretations of life after death. If the disagreement got big enough, someone would start his own church. Then people coming and going, attending and not attending church would be discussed as "walking the Path" or not.

As a child, I was often told to blindingly trust adults in the Church. If I had a question about something, it was the "Devil" who made me doubt. I was punished for noticing that Sunday School teachers lied about donations/tithes. My parents, like so many people, would pick and choose which commandments and laws to follow.

I've tried various churches and found the same thing in all of them; Greed, hypocrisy, pastor worship and predatory behavior. A lot of people argue that you can't judge a church on its followers. Perhaps, but I saw these behaviors in the leaders.

It seems like people with AS take Biblical texts literally as often as people without AS. It also seems to me that the more literally a person interprets the Bible, the stronger their feelings for or against it will be.

In terms of the "AS factor," I don't know. I always see extreme positions expressed on the Internet - from hardcore intolerant atheists to hardcore intolerant fundamentalist Christians. Wrong Planet has its share of both, but no more or less than I have seen anywhere else.

The modern date of christmas was moved to that day to further coincide with the pagan winter solstice festival (which explains christmas trees and what not), in an attempt to get pagans to convert to christianity.


Not quite sure why the sabbath was moved to sunday, but it was indeed originally on saturday (the Jewish faith still maintains a friday at sundown to saturday at sundown as their "sabbath period". Given my figurative interpretation of the Bible, however, I see the point about the sabbath was to provide a day of rest, no matter what day it was on. Notice how people who work seven full days a week, even if it's just to make ends meet, are usually more stressed out than the rest of us? God (or whoever wrote the Bible, if you don't believe in God) stuck that reference in there to explicitly prevent us humans from overworking ourselves.


Same thing as the first point. Early Christianity took up a lot of pagan symbols in an effort to entice pagans to convert.


Yes, I am a practicing Christian. And yes, I am taught to interpret the Bible figuratively, not literally. People who interpret the Bible literally not only scare me, but are a source of sadness for me, since such interpretation drives so many reasonable people away from not just Christianity, but any religion in general.

As for what I think the Bible's importance today is, I see it as the answer to "why" the universe exists (and it makes more sense to me than Brane theory), while scientific findings explain "how" the universe came to be and how it reached this point. Most mainline Christians (the ones you don't hear about) accept the ideas of Darwin, Einstein, etc. The official stance of many churches (the Roman Catholic Church, as well as most mainline Protestant churches) on evolution today, for example, is that there is nothing in evolution that precludes the concepts given in Genesis, provided that Genesis is interpreted figuratively, which it is in most circles, as Genesis was written long before the age of scientific methods,

In addition, the order of "creation" in the story actually goes in the same order as accepted by science: Light (big bang) -> separation of firmament (gases in the cosmos condensing into the first stars) -> dry land (volcanism produces solid rock to form the first continents) -> sea creatures, then beasts and insects on land (reflecting that life started in the sea and moved to land) -> humanity (humans arise after many other forms of creatures).

For more information on this concept, go to the Theistic Evolution on wikipedia.

i admire your faith but i cant believe in something like the bible with so many errors. how can you practice believing in something to be true when things are taken from other religions and passed off as truth? this tells me that the bible was not divinely inspired. god wouldnt take things from other faiths, or use a wrong day for the sabbath. i think you will find that most christian churches believe sunday is the sabbath and jesus was born on december 25th and the cross was invented by the christians, and that is incorrect.