is christianity a religion for neurotypicals?

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I saw the title of your post and the answer is, not at all. If you read through the bible, you will see that God always chose outcasts. For instance, Moses had a problem with stuttering. Also, God doesn't judge our outward appearances but our character as well as the heart. If you also read about the teaching of Jesus, it talks about how he went to the outcast. Why? The reason is not to condemn the world but to save it.

Having read the Bible a few times, I noticed that God endorsed the killing of a lot of people - even children and babies. Jesus was a decent bloke for the time period going off of the Biblical accounts although he’s not without problems IMO.

The effects of high-functioning autism on religiosity has been studied by academics in some depth:

https://escholarship.org/content/qt6zh3 ... 99502e.pdf

Briefly, they think it's a mixed picture with some traits repelling us from religion and others attracting us to it, though on the whole it seems that we're more likely to reject religion.

The relevent traits mentioned:

1. Hypoactive agency detection can make us avoid supernaturalism. (apparently humans tend to see living agency behind phenomena, which predisposes them to believe in deities)

2. Concrete, literal-mindedness can make us prefer logical beliefs over the metaphoric construals of religions texts.

3. Need for sameness and predictability can make us prefer the rigidity of religious doctrine.

4. Difficulty with new social relationships can make us appreciate the welcoming nature that many religious communities offer.

"On wrongplanet.net and other discussion boards for autistic
spectrum individuals, posters denounce supernaturalism,
proclaim the merits of their self-constructed theistic belief
systems and argue the logical appeal of Buddhism. These
observations, combined with recent commentaries about the
likely religious beliefs of HFA individuals (Delay, 2009;
Graetz & Durbin, 2008), suggest that these individuals’
beliefs may be influenced by their intellectual strengths (e.g.
emphasis on logic and attraction to systematizing
observables) and their social-emotional deficits (e.g.
reduced automatic inferences about mental states and
decreased orientation to social rewards)."

So according to that, Christianity (or perhaps religion in general) is to some extent a neurotypical thing, though it's not quite that simple. Makes sense to me, because in my case religion is something that happened to other people. I see agency detection as a bias, metaphors as smelling of propaganda and somewhat irrelevent to fact, I like predictability to some extent but have found ways other than religion for getting it, and although as somebody who has difficulty with new relationships I see the attraction of churches that might welcome me, my strong feeling that their doctrines are wrong has stopped me taking advantage of their invitations, and I get by without their help.

I've often wondered if my ADHD made it hard for me to get attached to religion. I was raised Christian in a couple of different churches. No matter what, I found the sermons to be atrociously boring - sitting down in one place for what felt like an eternity and doing anything that might be stimulative for me being considered "inappropriate". (I ended up doodling on the church pamphlets. It was the only thing I could do, other than let my imagination wander). It was absolutely dreadful! You couldn't get me attached to the church. I was so happy to be out and back to stimulating activities every single time.

Granted, that was childhood ADHD me. I've attended one church service as an adult for a friend and found myself a lot more attentive and interested in what was being said. (In that I wanted to understand my friends' beliefs. I did NOT like what the sermon actually said, it just gave me a view into why my friend thinks the way she does about some things).

Still, I don't think I could actually "enjoy" a church service, even as an adult. Sure, you might put me in a beautiful medieval cathedral and have a choir sing some Palestrina (if they even do that... From my understanding the Catholic church shut down polyphony shortly after Palestrina's time IIRC) and I'd thoroughly enjoy that... but the non-musical parts of the mass would be dreadfully boring aside from what stimulation I could get from the view of the cathedral.

There's also the fact that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't "feel" what others were feeling. Is that some kind of neurodivergence? I don't know. Certainly it just shows my brain and everything worked differently. I haven't seen anything in autism or ADHD suggest this kinda thing when I looked into it. But gosh, it was a significant barrier for me staying in Christianity. Once I got older and I saw this for what it was, I deconstructed easily. I have no reason to believe for myself.

^
Well, attention defecit doesn't mix well with an activity that demands a lot of attention to subject matter designed and governed by other people.

In my case, listening to the few preachers I heard and reading scripture didn't ultimately move my perspective their way at all. It was mostly a load of extraordinary claims that were never substantiated and incoherent arguments. And the hymns made very little sense to me. Way too theological, they went right over my head, and they were never explained. Didn't help that we were forced to sing them. I believed the miracle stories the class teacher told us at school when I was very young because everything else she told us seemed to be correct, but eventually I began to notice that they were controversial. My parents were secular so there was no pressure from them either way in those days. Not that I asked them their opinion.

Before that I had a hard time with their notion that Jesus expected belief as pretty much the most important thing, because although I knew my valid and sincere doubts couldn't reasonably be papered over, I still thought the stories might be true and that if they were, I was going to be in terrible trouble with God. It was a long time before I felt secure enough with atheism to stop feeling guilty and afraid. Being in the middle had been quite frightening, not credulous enough to be a believer yet credulous enough to think that I was in danger. I still feel that it was a very abusive thing of them to do to kids.

Don't quite know how that all ties in with ASD, but I suppose my logical mind had a lot to do with why they failed to persuade me. I gather NTs are more social with their concepts of reality, that they're better persuaded by emotive techniques than by straighforward unbiased information. So a priest creates a certain atmosphere and gets emotional, and that persuades people, while I just sat there and wondered why he was getting himself so steamed up and when he was going to start talking my language. The priests I like can make me want to believe them, but that just makes me sad that I have to disappoint them, because to me, it's a matter of weighing up the facts and being forced to recognise the result, and I can no more believe that the resurrection happened than I can believe that 2+2 makes 3. So I guess my brain really is too systematic and rational for religion.

I have another take. I haven't researched into this aspect as much, but one thing I've seen numerous times in researching autism and if I might have it is this notion of having a strong sense of justice. Of course, I'm not claiming every neurodivergent person is like that. But I will be going into that aspect here.

This is one aspect that I have noticed in myself, both on a small scale (like getting super frustrated seeing coworkers break little rules. I've always noticed, and sometimes I have taken it to management, making myself very unpopular) - but also on a much grander scale, like human rights.

Me deconstructing from Christianity had many components. It's very complex. As I mentioned in my last post, my ADHD and also whatever caused my lack of feeling what others were feeling in church were two components. Those two were major in making my deconstruction easier and also making me go to nonbelief altogether as opposed to deism or something like that. However, one major component that brought me to fully realizing I had no reason to belief (a lot of this lack of belief for myself was subconscious, or at the very least I tried to deny it to myself), was my morality. For as long as I can remember, I have had a strong moral compass that didn't rely on Christianity. I had a strong sense of "social justice" from a very, very young age, despising racism and sexism. When I learned what homosexuality was, I felt the same way about homophobia. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why so many Christians were against homosexuality, it made no sense to me. It harms no one.

Learning about the Bible's sexism, allowing of slavery, homophobia, ordering of genocide and also really thinking about the concept of Hell was devastating to me. I was raised in a liberal sect so I hadn't been taught a lot of that much. Despite all of this, in my early twenties I tried so hard being a 'Progressive Christian', but ultimately I couldn't keep it all together. There was no reading, interpretation of the Bible that could make it okay.

My strong moral compass conflicted with the Bible and it could not be reconciled. In fact, my moral compass conflicting with Christianity was so strong that it undid everything for me. Like with the question of the Bible being against homosexuality, it came down to these options in my mind, since clearly there is nothing wrong with homosexuality from reason:

1. There is a God, but the Bible wasn't written from the word of God.
2. There is a God, but he is evil.
3. There is no God.

When I came to this dilemma, it all unraveled and due to my unrealized natural lack of belief, it quickly came down to 3. This isn't to say that this some solid argument to be a nonbeliever or anything, it's just my line of thinking with my strong moral compass. I already lacked reason to believe, I was just fooling myself and this clash with my morality opened the door for me to see the truth.

Should it be that this strong moral compass of mine is a result of neurodiversity then I would say it was downright vital to my deconstruction process. Perhaps another way that my neurodiversity kept me from turning out religious. Interesting.

All religions were created by NTs for NTs. But most religions create niches for various personality types.

Like if you're a biker type and you lived in the middle ages the church would encourage you to ...join the Crusades...just to get rid of you.

Or if you did have autistic traits you could become a religious hermit (in Christianity or Buddhism).

If you're adhd you might be right at home in a modern Pentecostal Church... with all of the loud singing, dancing, talking in tongues, and fainting. And you might be thrilled to try a little snake handling.

I noticed how many Aspies on the forum (and especially Reddit) claim to be atheists after finding Christianity nonsensical. I, however, had a weird childhood that eventually led me to understand Catholicism better. I had my doubts before and wanted to try finding reason in Christianity, but after I found the Summa Theologica by Saint Thomas Aquinas, I had a better understanding of natural theology and Catholicism. I also wondered once why the writers of the Bible would condemn certain acts the modern world finds permissible. I will try to say this professionally so you can get at what I am trying to say without messing my message up. The end of certain acts determines the nature of the act itself, and procreation provides the excellency of sexual relations, even if no procreation occurs as the act remains natural. Any hindrance to the act involves a distortion of the proper nature of the act and is therefore sinful. You can say that no one gets hurt even if the act distorts nature, but the sin undermines the sacred dignity of the individual.

Marriage is a sacrament and not just a social construct since marriage unites people made in the imago Dei, and since sexual relations can distort the integral dignity of humanity, no sexual relations must be permissible unless sanctified by someone with such a sacred authority. The only social constructs that involve having a spouse occur outside of the sacrament of marriage, which, theologically speaking, can be the only true marriage. The position is controversial and radical, yet people pious in the Catholic faith supported the teaching. If you look up J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, even he had the same idea on marriage, stating that the government should only recognize sacramental marriage as the only true form of marriage. Without recognizing it as the only true form, the idea of people having a sacred dignity becomes relative. The reason why the modern world reduced sin to physical harm is the loss of the sacred. If I do not see you as having a sacred reality like being in the imago Dei, then I ought not to treat you like you have a sacred reality. Sacrilege cannot be possible without having something sacred to sacrilege against, after all.

My sacramental view of reality had me at odds with Calvinists and Evangelicals during my childhood and even teen years. Living in the South, fundamentalists will chew you out for being a papist and worshipping idols. If I see something sacred, I am automatically a pagan. If you are sacred, I ought to treat you as something sacred. The loss of a sacramental perspective can distort how one ought to treat others, and the Southern fundamentalists will treat you as not something sacred. If they demand you to do things that involve recognizing sacramentality without believing it, the fundamentalists turn towards tribalism. Strange enough, the fundamentalists are more prone to committing sacrilege than the pagans since even they believe sacredness can exist within the empirical world. As a teen, you go into a rebellious phase, and choosing atheism seems to be a rebellious thing to do against Christians; however, I chose to be radically Catholic since being a Catholic was more rebellious to the fundamentalists than being an atheist. I will admit, though, that I did not live the best life and can still come off as a hypocrite.

I know that religion can be traumatizing within certain cultures, but if you compare Christianity in America to the Global South like Mexico and various African countries, you will notice that the people in the Global South tend to be happier than the Christians in America. I don't blame Christianity. I blame Christians attracted by secularism. I went to Mexico and found the homilies there way better than in America because there was that sense of aestheticism you could only find in cultures not attracted to materialism. I thought Aspies would like Christianity since they seem to live a somewhat monastic life with a sense of aesthetics, but I guess I was wrong. I am also not a mystic. I just like to read theological topics that relate to mysticism. I think Christianity only makes sense on the condition that no one separates the sacred from the profane; otherwise, Christianity becomes irrational and meaningless. You either have Catholicism or nothing at this point.

^That was very disturbing. Have you been diagnosed with a dissociative mental illness?

My impression from that was that he was talking about people in the abstract and from a religious POV - not from a first person, personal perspective.