Why We Have Aspies

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Ironically enough, most Aspies are not religious. However, I can't see myself turning my fixations on math, Latin or art over to God or religion. Math has absolutely nothing to do with God, despite what people think and God did not create it, I don't read eclesiastical Latin, nor do I believe Latin makes religion any better; I prefer classical Latin, and I don't draw religious subjects either, and don't intend to.

And contrary to whatever else is in the bible about "ideal Christians", I refuse to beat women, torture others for things they did not deserve, kill or otherwise discriminate against other unbelievers, stone people for doing certain things, kill people for the sake of God, pray, love God or discriminate against homosexuals.

There's really nothing wrong with suggesting that Asperger's or autism is genetic. At the very least, there's evidence supporting it, and it doesn't contradict evolution theory. I don't buy that there is a moral purpose behind Asperger's or Autism existing. They exist because of genetic recombinations, and nothing much else; a non moral purpose. Nothing much else to ponder about, I don't think.

I think 'Christians' who stone people, kill for God, and discriminate against homosexuals and other such stuff are not acting like good Christians. Jesus didn't stone people in fact he saved a woman from being stoned by saying only he who had not sinned could through the first stone and as everyone sins no one could. All the verses and stories people use as condamnation of homosexuals are contraversal, and hard to translate. The part in the new testament where 'homosexuals' are listed as damned the Greek word doesn't even mean homosexual. It defines a very specific kind of child molester relatively common but disliked in the Roman world: a man who took pubescent boys made them to look like girls and sexually assalted them while controlling them and tryng to keep them looking like little girls. The stories of Sodom and the Levites concubine best condemn breaking the law of hospitality and rape, not homosexuality.
I believe in God, and am a Christian. But I do not force that on anyone else. I have friends and acquaintances who are non-Christian: Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Wiccan, and even Athiest. We get along fine because we do not arbitrarily condmn what another believes and accept eachother for who we are not what we believe. Religion and Faith are personal chioces that should be respected. I know not everyone thinks this though I do not understand why.
I know that God is there for me because I've always felt him and he was there when I needed him most. Its hard to explain and it can not be scientifically proven, but for me it is enough. Religion and science don't belong to the same fields, they do not arbitrarily contradict each other or oppose each other because they deal with different things.

Perhaps you should read the bible again. There are verses that say to stone people for being disbelievers, and God did command Abraham to kill his son. And the bible has nothing to do with the Greek because they believed in their own religions and did not get introduced to Christianity. In fact, many Greek statues get defaced because Christians consider them to be heathens. And there is a verse on putting homosexuals to death, which I clearly refuse to do. It doesn't even mention the word "homosexual"; but is made clear by the phrase, "a man sleeping with a man".

Of course, if you choose not to believe these things, that's fine with me. It might be better that way.

When I said Greek I was talking about the language in which the New Testament was written. I know there was stoning but in that verse Jesus basically forbid it. Also stoning for disbelief was a cultural principle at that time. If you didn't believe in God you might upset him and endanger everyone or so they thought. Religion was a part of everyday life then not separated from government or law. People saw the gods as controlling all things and vengeful against those who didn't show them proper reverence. The Hebrews were no different in this regard. The verse 'man laying with man and women with women' ends with 'as against their nature' implying using homosexual behavior as a fetish, not homosexuals who do not engage in same sex as merely fetish but as in a real relationship. This leads some Biblical scholars to think that perhaps these verses were misinterpreted. Many believe that they mean homosexual people are condemned but not everyone does nor does everyone think about it. To persecute them for it goes against Jesus command not to 'worry about the speck in your brother's eye when you don't see the board in your own eye' and to 'Love your neighbor', many places show the principle that it is God's job to judge not mans. Unfortunately these verses are largely ignored for the more controversial ones taken out of context. Yes God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, but he stopped it forbidding the sacrifice and in Leviticus child sacrifice is explicitly condemned. Scholars see the Abraham and Isaac/Ishmael (in the Qur'an it was Ishmael who Abraham was told to sacrifice) as a means of showing obedience to God as higher than sacrifice, the replacement of child sacrifice common at this time with animal sacrifice (the ram replacing Abraham's son in the sacrifice), Abraham messed up he was suppose to argue like with Sodom and Gomorrah to show justice but didn't among others. It is hard to understand and apply principle from the Bible today if one doesn't understand the time and context from which these stories came. I do read the Bible. I've even translated a bunch of the Old Testament. People will get different things out of it. Thus, it isn't fair to assume all who believe in the Bible will think or act the same. Or that because an obscure verse says stone someone people will. As you well may have noted the Bible has contradictions, different stories highlight a different meaning so these weren't seen as a problem as they are now. There are people who say the Bible must be interpreted literally and everything taken exactly as it is written, but they are a minority. Even in Biblical times people didn't interpret the Bible so narrowly.

I meant that the original poster seems to think that Aspies are religious because of the few verses he quoted, but the irony is that it is most often the case that they aren't religious because of what you have explained.

Angelus-Mortis the gospels were written in Greek because that was the language of most of the Roman world. Latin was spoken in Italy, execpt for many cities in the south which were Greek, but wasn't widespreed till the Eastern and Western Roman World's had drifted further apart with the "barbarians" at Ravenna and the "Romans" (we call them Byzantines) at Constantinople. Then, Latin was the lingua Franca of the west and Greek of the east. At least among the educated. At this time the Bible was translated from Greek and Hebrew to Latin in the Vulcate. Jesus prabably never spoke a word of Latin in his life, most likely not even Greek though he would have probably heard Greek as much of the Levant was Hellenized. He spoke Aramaic. Its interesting how you say the Greek doesn't matter because it was the Roman world as the main contributer to the spreed of Christianity was a Greek Jew, Saul, whose name was canged to Paul. His letters compile a large portion of the New Testament. The Greek and Roman worlds were not completly seporate entities with no conection to or influence over as you seem to imply. They flowed together incorperating language and cultural influences and messed time-span (Roman History Started Before Classical Greek History ended) hence the term Greeco-Roman, used by scholars to describe this time. The languages and cultures described in the Bible and used to write it are important in trying to understand it, even the Greek, which for the New Testament was highly important linguisticly.
Yes, the Bible is full of contradiction, one of the reasons is the concepts of Justice and Mercy, which differed vastly from todays standards. In those times showing compassion instead of harsh punishment in Justice was a problem as they were compltly opposite concepts throughout the ancient world, and one could probably argue lingered into the middle ages. When they tried to describe a God with both qualities (a compassionate and just God) it became even more problematic. Which is one of the reasons it sometimes seems like the Bible could be describing two different gods as it took a long time to be able to merge these concepts; language developement also played a part in this as these facets had different words and none to connect them togeather as one concept for a while.
It wasn't a sexual fetish that was condemned, then mistranslated as homosexuality because we didn't have an equivalent word for it and now don't have a single one the closet would be pediphile but that doesn't fully cover it (the only way homosexual even romotely fit is that it was men and boys thus the same gender thought it was the man condemned here), it was a form of child abuse. Not only were this guys having sex, forced I might add, with these adolesent boys it was very clearly a form of subjegation, control, and psychological distress. It did hurt other people, and was condemned by more than just the Bible, many frowned upon it sometimes even violently, but the law of the time offered no way to stop it. If you were to use the actually word at that time everyone would have known what it meant and few would have liked it. No one would have confused it with simple homosexuality, even those opposed of homosexuality. Sadly, most modern people have no clue so conclusions are done too harshly. As for the man lying with man, I've already pointed out that the very last part is ignored. Though I didn't mention this verse was the condmnation/punishment it was not a senerio offering a punishment or condemnation which are actually two different things. Personally I think that its up to God and no one else to determine how homosexuality will be dealt with in the eternity, not mans to persecute now. Sexuality should be a private matter. Further Sodom was not destroyed because it was full of homosexuals. It was destroyed because of corruption and violence and the main issues in its final destruction (it would have been spared had the angels found ten good people) was the threat of rape (sexual violence), and breaking of the law of hospitality a major concept in the ancient near east and its cultures.
The suggestion of child sacrifice did in fact matter as the issue had to be addressed and that was usually how these things were addressed. In the culture at that time child sacrifice was completly acceptable. It was wide spread in Canaan where Abraham was, acceptable but less common in Egypt and Hurran where he staid, and Mesopotamia where he came from. It had to be contered as it was begining to be seen as acceptable by God's followers, ie Abraham's camp. Clear evidence of this was that Abraham did not question it as he had the judgement on Sodom. He didn't see the problem with child sacrifice as he did with punishing an entire city if there were some innocent people there. Purhaps he should have, but never once did he relise it until God finally stopped him as it became obvious Abraham was not going to find fault and hesitate to carry it through. Abraham was not afraid and he wasn't forced he never questioned it, hesitate or even showed much thought into the matter of killing his son. That was Abraham not God who showed full intention to child sacrifice. Most places in the Bible it is said that God wants faith or obedience not sacrifice and it says it at the end of this Abraham story as well. That is the message, not sacrifice.
I never meant people don't interprite the Bible literally, I mean they shouldn't. It is not all metaphor, but its not all literal either. It was not written that way; its much more complicated than that. You can't interprite any story in the Bible to just mean what you want it to mean. I don't try to do that. There are parts of the Bible I do not agree with which I can't change the meaning of with interpretation as that is not what Biblical interpretation is for or what it is meant to do.
The crusades weren't just about interpreting the Bible, in fact while religious belief was a big underpinning of the crusades and why people went on them, the Bible actually played a rather minor role. It was mostly political (one should note that religon on politics weren't completly seperate in this time). The Byzantines felt that the Muslim Arabs ussurpt their politicle territory and wanted mercenaries to help them get it back. They asked the Pope to find these mercenaries as he was the most influencial politicaly powerful figure in western Europe. He of course had an agenda of his own, which was getting the holy lands back under the control/influences of the Roman Church instead of the Greek Church. So in his call he over exaggerated the Byzantine call for help and made up a bunch of religious attrocities he claimed the Sarecens were useing against Christians to incite the crowd to win back the holy lands.
As for the Inquisition that was partly religious fanatism (always a bad thing in my opinion and often counter to the religion the fanatics claim to adhear to), and partly political as Queen Isabella was useing religion to intensify/solidafy her control over the newly reconquered territories in Spain (namely the Kingdom of Castile, Granada newly capture by Castile and spread to Aragon through her husband) formally part of Al-Anduluse. The Inquision in France was also political as the King wanted to subvent the power of strong military-monastic secretish groups to bust his power wealth and control through means of religious justification. These weren't Biblical times. Yes in those times some did view these sources very literally, however most of the scholars (Talmuds were written shortly before and around the time of Jesus which didn't express a completly literal view) didn't and a large number of regular people as well. The New Testament mentions different groups of people the smallest group, that of the Sadduces, was the only one which followed a mostly literal view.
You are right the contradictions, use or metaphorical analagy, and unlogical nature/formulation of the Bible and of faith make it pretty hard for most aspies to believe. Faith is not logical, its not meant to be proven nor does it need to be, and much of it is based on what can not be known. These things tend to run counter to aspie intuition. They also aggrivate some nuerotypicals to much for them to believe in it. I never contended that most aspies are religious. I simply write what I know about the Bible, Biblical interpretation, Christianity, religion, and religious dogma. It may be a little obvious from my posts but religion is one of my majors along with history and archaeology (my primary major) hence I know alot on this topic. I don't presume to know everything about the topic or try and make others believe in the Bible or in God. I couldn't do that if I wanted to, which I don't.
I stress that faith is personal. You can not force people to believe in anything and if you did it wouldn't be faith.

Angelus-Mortis we didn't actually come up with religion doesn't explain autism, you did. I was presenting information not issueing judgement. I don't think religion or science can fully explain why aspies exsist as I don't think there is an answer to that question. An individual aspie can find the explaination that need as to why they have Asperger's Syndrome, in a purely personal sense, useing their believe or their logic. Sometimes people need answers about themselves even if they find them in their head, a Bible, or through scientific analysis.
nominalist thank you, pederasty would be the closest modern word for that, but doesn't cover all of it as in pederasty the adolesent boy is not made to look like a girl and kept looking like a young girl for as long as possible.

I don't think the Bible explains autism or aspergers at all, on the contrary, very likely it was considered to be demon possession at the time.

Angelus-Mortis on a wide scale, ie everyone has to think so, I do not think religion explains it, but for an individual or a group of individuals it does, because it forms the explanation they need and doesn't hurt anyone.
It is not science job to explain why something like Asperger's Syndrome exsists beyond mere mechanics, ie its genetic, brain abnormalities exctra (which doesn't cover the full meaning of why as it doesn't go into the need of this particular disorder), it tells the how and what of it that is all. If people want a deeper understanding of why (other than it just happens) they can only find it inside themselves. Whether its a way of explaining why so they understand, accept or find comfort, that is up to the individual.
What I was doing with my Biblical analogies was showing the problems with or filling in extra information for some of the proofs given by people.
nominalist as pederasty just means a relationship between a man and a male youth it doesn't fully cover the original meaning as that was a specific type or relationship not a generic one.