Religion Poll

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Raised Christian, but categorize myself as agnostic b/c my beliefs fall in2 a strange mixed category that is mainly a buddhism/Hindu/Jewish hybrid

As I understand it, the difference between the two is that in Protestantism you can have a personal relationship with god and in Catholicism your relationship with god is through the church.

As to the topic, I'm an atheist. I can't bring myself to believe that religion and the existence of a god is anything other than a fairy tale invented by humans.

I also agree that both Catholicism and Protestantism are Christian. I listed them seperately because I wanted specific data on which denominations aspies were most drawn to, because there are some pretty major dogmatic differences (I won't get into those right now). My thinking was that I would get more insight with more specific options, but I also do not consider them seperate faiths.

Thanks for posting!

i voted atheist / agnostic but in reality i'm not sure if i'm atheist or pantheist.

Wikipedia says this of "naturalistic pantheism":

where pantheism is defined as


that pretty much nails my beliefs on the matter, maybe minus the hippy dippy "celebration of life" bit. i'd hardly call this a religious doctrine though; more like a philosophical / ethical standpoint.

it's said of pantheism that most pantheists arrive at their beliefs and then seek out a term for it (then discover like-minded people) rather than deriving their beliefs from pre-existing doctrine. before discovery of the term i had thought of the universe and the earth as organisms containing individual cells (humans) much like cells in a hologram or individualized cells in an organ in your body that contain the genetic information of your whole body, but differentiated from others to serve a more specialized function. well that was clumsy, but i probably got my point across. a strange belief for someone who feels fundamentally disconnected from other people.

Albert Einstein was allegedly a pantheist.

I voted Jedi. I couldn't help it, Star Wars is my greatest obsession and to see "Jedi" on here was too odd for me to not click it. Though in reality I'm an atheist. Though I do follow some of the Jedi philosophies.

Of course it would. Now we get to burn you at the stake instead. As we're the majority.

Isn't loyalty an autistic/AS trait? Personally, it would be impossible for me to reject how I was raised.

At any rate, I'm Christian, though like many things, it's something I'm uncomfortable talking about. I went to Christian school from 6th grade though 12th grade. The whole, "Are you saved?" thing was never comfortable for me, because in my mind, I wonder, "How do I know?" People respond, "If you know, you are." I'll admit, this is hard for me. I don't have a diagnosis, but maybe my brain is just wired differently so that this concept is hard for me to understand. I also don't really know about whether you can call the entire Bible God's word. This is such a cornerstone of fundamentalist Christianity, but didn't men decide which writings were canon? I mean, the Catholic Bible has extra books, so I just don't know if the entire thing is relevant... it could be, but for me, the focus is on Jesus.

I've heard people say some pretty amazing things about their callings and what they believe God has led them to do. I hope to someday feel as in his presence as they do. I'm an optimist, and I always look in a positive light at what's going on, what's happened, and where events are leading me. If I believe in anything so strongly, it's that both the good and the bad in life lead to a greater conclusion, even if the good is nearly impossible to see.

I think, however, that Christianity's place in the modern world is widely misunderstood. Do people actually think God is a man in the sky with a great flowing white beard? I really like to think that they don't, but this image makes it easy for people to mock religion. Also, there's no reason to believe that just because science lets us understand things, that the world is no longer the work of a loving God. And, as an aside, while I generally believe what scientists tell me, I find it interesting that, since most of us aren't scientists ourselves, we rarely think of accepting science as "faith," but that's what it is. Anyway, the important thing to me is that I believe in the message of Jesus, and that message is the same to me whether God is a bearded man in the sky, The Force, an alien, an inter-dimensional being, an eccentric scientist who made another universe, whatever. I guess that sounds vaguely agnostic, but Christianity never said what God is (other than that he made man in his image, whatever that means, exactly), and honestly, it doesn't matter.

Yes, religious people can be very hypocritical. I like to not think of myself as "religious," but that I put the way of Christianity as the basis for everything I do (or at least I try to). I don't like rituals or dogma (much of which isn't even in line with Jesus' teachings). I just hope to be a good person, and that if people see peace in me, maybe they will seek God in their own way. Since I'm not good with social interaction, perhaps I fail in this, but I'm not a preachy person at all... I'll rarely bring this stuff up... I just hope that my presence somehow makes everyone's life more peaceful.

People in my area when I was raised weren't really religious at all but they were somewhat afraid of coming out and saying so. All the births, deaths and marriages would be done through the church but nobody could explain why. We got some primitive bible lessons at school which didn't make a lot of sense to me......I kind of believed it for a while because everything else they taught us seemed to be correct. Eventually as a teenager I looked around a few religions. The only one I found that seemed worthwhile was the Hare Krishna people, but their hierarchical structure, their adherence to dogma, and the way they pampered their leader put me off. There was a Christian evangelist as well but he turned out to be very full of his own importance, never listening or altering his beliefs to accommodate my own ideas. In the end I figured he was plying his craft just for the kudos of leadership - a few old ladies thought he was wonderful - though he may have had designs on their money......I got the impression that if he'd asked them for a tithe for some woolly project or other, they'd not have been too skeptical, though I have no evidence that he ever did that. More recently I've heard a priest lying at a Pentecostal church - not a terrible lie, but it did reinforce my feeling that I don't trust God's henchmen.

So I didn't really change religions - I'm probably down somewhere as a Christian but that's even more meaningless than it was for my parents. I'm similarly unmoved by occult practices, and think that there is nothing in them, though I'm always open to new evidence, if any should turn up.

My parents were Christian when I grew up, but they weren't really ever super religious. I grew up being a theistic agnostic. I do believe that a higher being could have created everything, but then again we could have came from some other scientific means. I guess I'm keeping my mind open lol

Unitarian, by choice. It just clicked better than Catholicism, which my parents follow, ever did. So converting was a must. Honestly, I believe God does only have one 'personality', though I also believe he can be seen differently by everyone. For me, I see him as one being.