Are all AS religious?

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I'm not religious at all, I did grow up in a Mormon household and I hated a lot things about the Mormon church. I hated going and stopped going in high school.

ryan93: The latter two arguments fall under the logical fallacy known as "argument from personal incredulity"...ie, "this doesn't make sense to me, and is thus wrong." They aren't really valid arguments against a theistic viewpoint. Far better, methinks, to just cite the utter lack of evidence for any of deity.

Trust me: arguments of that sort only open you up to claims that "Well, you don't understand the divine plan," and others of that ilk.

If you really want to cite the problem of evil as an argument, use the Epicurean formulation.

God and I have an arrangement. I don't bother him, he doesn't bother me. After all, a being who's genuinely omnipotent... why would he need my adulation? A drunk on the street goes around picking fights to show how hard he is, but an ex-SAS squaddie will tend to be quiet and calm. He knows he's tough as nails, and doesn't need anyone else to tell him that.

So God might exist. Or he might not. I'm nominally Protestant, agnostic tending towards atheist, and while I concede the possibility of a god or gods, I see no reason for them to affect the lives or afterlives of ordinary humans in any significant way.

Speaking of afterlives, isn't the thought of an afterlife the most terrifying prospect imaginable? Eternal oblivion would be better, rather than being destined for an eternity of... well, who knows? And you don't even know which religion's dicta to follow, or even which ruels of your own religion. Which religion? Which faction? Which edition of that faction's rules? Whichever way you cut it, you'll end up with a good few points on your life licence. And even if you do pass the arbitrary scales of obedience test... well, I dunno, but I reckon sitting on a cloud playing a lyre could get dull after a couple of hundred years, and the universe could get pretty old...

So yeah. Agnostic, bordering on atheist.

It's not really a continuum. Sounds to me as though you are an agnostic atheist.

Atheist in observance, agnostic in inclination.

I prefer to think of myself as a don'tgiveatossist.

Exactly. From what you've said, you are an atheist. Your epistemological position happens to be agnostic.

Do you actively believe that there is/are god(s) out there? If not, you are an atheist.

Do you claim to have some sort of positive knowledge as to whether there are any god(s) out there? If not, you are agnostic.

The term 'agnostic' doesn't really say anything about belief. It merely indicates your epistemological position. For example, I am an agnostic atheist. I do not in any way believe in a god, but i also state that the entire idea of god(s) is by definition beyond evidence or reason, and therefor I don't worry about it in my day to day life. This makes me agnostic, in the sense that Huxley originally intended.

My only point was that '(a)theist' and '(a)gnostic' do not represent two points on a continuum. They are orthogonal to each other.

Not to be picky, but an atheist specifically believes that there is no god; an agnostic just considers that it's not possible to know. A mere absence of belief is, I would say, the very broadest definition possible of atheism.

Positive knowledge is irrelevant, because - of course - there's no such thing. There's just belief. And there are essentially three categories:

Theist - Believes a god or gods exist
Agnostic - Believes it's impossible to know either way
Atheist - Believes no god or gods exist

Epistemology doesn't really enter into it, I'm afraid.

The term has nothing to do with belief in god(s).

I know a few aspies that have no religious affiliation

Lau, the term has everything to do with belief in gods - indeed, the word itself comes from the Greek for "without gods". I'm not quite sure why we've so spectacularly derailed the thread on a frankly rather unnecessary semantic point, but...

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/40634/atheism

The Random House dictionary defines it thus:


The American Heritage Dictionary - and I realise one word in particular there may disqualify it as an authority on English - says this:


Anyway, even if Doc_Daneeka were correct, the definitions I was working on are the accepted meanings in common parlance. Was this whole incorrectly nitpicky diversion really necessary?

No. It does not.

At the risk of sounding like a panto, yes it does. "A-" = without, "theos" = gods. Just as "agnostic", literally translated, means "without knowledge"; in this case, that it's impossible to know.

Or did you mean something else?

EDIT: Aaah, you were talking about agnosticism. Then yes.

I was born this way. God made me this way. This is what I believe. And no, I cannot be cured, because I don't WANT to be cured. I would be someone else entirely. I don't want to lose who I am. My husband loves me this way.

It matters not whether one disbelieves in god(s) or simply lacks belief in any god(s). Such a person is by definition an atheist. You are quite right that the latter is a rather broad definition, but atheism is a fairly broad concept. It's worth noting that your citation of the Random House dictionary supports my view. 'Disbelief,' after all, means a lack of belief:

The Random House Dictionary wrote:

1. the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true.

Do click on that. I embedded a link in the header of a quote, so I wasn't sure if if the link would be easily visible.

As for agnosticism, I should have used the phrase "claimed positive knowledge." With that slight modification, my point stands.

As for the word 'agnostic', let us look at what Huxley meant by the term. He meant it to describe a person who feels that the idea of a god is beyond any evidence, and thus not worth any sort of consideration in one's life. It is simply beyond knowledge. If you want to read some sort of (non)faith-based position into agnosticism, that's your business.

The terms '(a)gnostic' and '(a)theist' are orthogonal to each other. Thus, I describe myself as an agnostic atheist.

I completely agree with the above (except I don't have a husband ).

Ditto and I'll add this: Just because the pains of this life pisses off Mankind does not mean that an all-knowing God did it for that reason, because to assume you know how God thinks and towards what purpose, and by what measure of fairness and justice is STUPID.

And any of you who might think that being born with AS is a curse in the sense that God is punishing you (or you are/became Atheist because you doubt that a loving God could do this, hence refute His divinity on cruelty grounds), I suggest you consider the following thought: we are IMPORTANT to the survival of the species, just like those who were far-sighted among our ancient ancestors must have helped our "tribes" deal with a tiger that was out of the average person's view, to help us to escape. A necessary design flaw for the good of all.

BTW some personal stuff in my life: I had an only child who had some serious health issues (resulting in her death at the age of 2) and about 4-5 months before her death My (ex)-wife and I were each, separately, visited by "beings", me in an auditory message, which sounded like thousands of voices in unison, and to the ex, in a vision of many angels in the clouds holding our soon-to-be-dead daughter, explicitly telling us she would die and that she was a bodhisattva sent to this world to help heal our (co-dependent) families, and that the name we had chosen for her was all wrong and told us, each, separately, at two different times, to call her Sandra, which we did. We only shared these experiences later, after she died.

I swear to you it felt emotionally just like the Biblical account of Moses and the Burning Bush must have felt. I was awestruck and dumbfounded.

Just like NTs and Aspies have certain ways to communicate, which differ from each other, God most likely uses telepathy and ways unknowable by us mere humans.

I have no problem seeing the world thru God/Scientist eyes; it all fits perfectly to me. BTW Darwin was religious, and did not see the conflict either.

This board needs to calm down a bit, nobody has anything to "prove" about their beliefs.

We all should respect each other, no matter what our religious beliefs or lack thereof may be.

Peace to you all