Aspies and religion

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I'm wondering if Aspies have trouble accepting religion because it's not something that's black and white... I always had a hard time with it for that reason, and i'm not dx'ed with AS although I have some characteristics. My IL's is very strict with religion, and my family isn't so it's alien to me. FIL went as far as giving my PDD-NOS son a kid's bible and told him he needs to memorize a specific prayer in it, presumably so he can saved...? It was the Apostle's Creed, that was it. I told him if he wants to, he certainly can, but he does NOT have to do it.

All that to say, how are other ASD kids or adults with religion? Is it something you just accept as fact, or are there too many grey areas for that to happen?

many religions have a very clear black-and-white aspect. you either believe or you don't. you are either saved or you are not. you are either one of us or you are one of them.

i wonder if one of the reasons more aspies do not come to church is the large number of people. or maybe the loud music especially from a pipe organ.

any ideas?

I think it's actually the "one of us or one of them" aspect that turns me off. It's just not that way... and I have a hard time singing hymns I don't understand. That and the noise. I hate noise. LOL

I had trouble accepting religion as a kid because of God. Yes, it unsettled me to the core that there was a totalitarian being in the sky who could do whatever he wants, including things that make life unpleasant for people. I also thought that he could make me miserable however he pleased (hearing "God will punish you" all the time gave me that idea). So when I lost my balance and fell off a tree branch, I told my parents "God pushed me". When I lost my favorite toy and couldn't find it for three days, I thought that God hid it so he could watch me cry. At the same time, when I found the toy, I was really happy, because I felt like I outsmarted God. No matter what adults told me, I always knew the "truth" that God was mistreating me to get pleasure out of it.

Needless to say, I became an atheist very quickly. I rejected all notions of God, and dove headfirst into studying science, especially astronomy. My peers, on the other hand, did believe in God, but I wasn't surprised; he didn't treat them anywhere near as bad as he treated me. (Well, duh, my life was bad because of social problems with AS, not God, but how was I to know that as a child?) I ended up being an atheist until my 20's, when I adopted a rationalist, borderline agnostic belief, as in: "I'm sure He's out there somewhere, but whatever".

Last edited by Aspie1 on 03 May 2009, 3:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Most kids, it seems, will just accept whatever religion or superstition they're told by parents or other authority figures. It's not the case for everyone, sure, but kids are generally very gullible. I have to wonder if aspie kids might be even more trusting and more readily accept these things. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of religious aspies around here who will probably tell you they had no trouble accepting their religion.

I can't say I never had any difficulty accepting what I was told to believe - mostly because it seemed in many ways self-contradictory and very unfair. God was a spiteful, angry monster of a deity, who was supposed to love and care for us, but might strike us down at any instant. It always seemed that I was being taught to live in fear, but what really bothered me was that the Sunday school teachers became absolutely hostile at my questions rather than trying to answer them. It seems to be the usual response of people who think you should just accept whatever they say without question.

And in spite of all of that, I still became deeply religious in my teens and pretty much went off the deep end of sanity, projecting my beliefs everywhere they didn't belong. I finally realized that the only reason I ever continued to think of myself as a Christian was that I was afraid of what God might do to me if I didn't (and because of what my family would do, which is why I never involved them), so I swore it off and found that nothing changed except that I was suddenly free of a tremendous burden.

I grew up secular, so when I started noticing religion, it didn't really seem like something that applied to me. I didn't pay it much attention for a long time. My understanding was that some people thought there was a God and some didn't, but I didn't know it was a big deal. Whenever I went to church, the readings from the Bible were completely incomprehensible to me. (Even at age 16.)

I eventually realized how it was important to some people, but faith is something that took me a LOOOONG time to comprehend. When I was a teenager, my argument for not being religious was, "Well, I can't force myself to believe in something." Because it seemed clear to me that belief was governed by outside influence, and was not a choice. It took me forever to realize that this choice is EXACTLY what people mean by "faith". I think that's what was always unnerving to me, even since childhood. I used to pretend religious people were a different species, like in stories I had read where an alien species had a totally different ways of thinking that always confused the human characters. When I went on a ski trip with my friend's youth group, I pretended I was the only human.

I also remember thinking it was hilarious that the neighbor kids didn't believe in cave men.

Last edited by wigglyspider on 03 May 2009, 2:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I grew up a catholic. Honestly never did I take it seriously or actually believe there was a god.

Why assume the automatic position is that people will be naturally drawn to religion and you need a reason not to?

I am not one of those hostile atheists, but I am quite intrigued why religious people are so obsessive over it. It probably does fill I need that doesn't apply to me.

Like "knowing I'm not alone". this does nothing for me, in fact it kind of creepy. I don't link religion with morals. In fact if you listen to evangelists, they will tell that believing in Jesus is more important than your personal morals. Morality is something that is part of the person. it has nothing to do with religion.

My son believes in God, although he has his own unique explanation for why. He once said that God equals science. That is a fairly simplistic view of how he sees it, but it works for him.

It's a little easier for us because both sides of the family are liberal Catholics. Everyone goes to church but no one thinks its dreadful if we miss mass because we just couldn't pull it together that morning. Our faith doesn't force us to contradict science; Catholicism does not teach that the Bible is a literal historic record.

All of which has given my son both a sense of identity ("we're Catholics") as well as the freedom to make his own decisions about much of it.

His religion teachers adore him. Apparently he brings THE most insightful comments - and most interesting questions - to class. He has attended weekly classes after school since first grade and he actually likes going.

Attending church was more difficult, but our parish has a children's liturgy program that pulls the little ones out of mass for a separate, age appropriate lesson, and that was a life saver. My son was able to do that until he was old enough and mature enough to actually (mostly) sit sill for an hour. Forcing church on him any earlier would have been torture, and probably would have interfered with his ability to enjoy faith.

It was funny when I signed him up for a Jewish summer camp. I thought he'd find it interesting, to have those few hours of Jewish tradition, but it seemed to upset his view of the balance of things. That was when I first realized how the faith was really part of his identity. In the end it worked out and he enjoyed his camp, but we did have to invest some time in discussing it.

Ultimately, I think that believing in God can be seen as quite logical. What I've always done and my son knows I do is basically insert God's hand in all those "it just happened" places. The big bang? God. The mutations in evolution? God's hand. It kind of defies logic to think that everything about our lives was totally random, so God can form the missing piece. That seems to fit in just fine with my son's AS logic (not to mention my most likely AS dad and spouse ).

I didn't have a problem with the ritual of Catholicism, apart from the social aspect. I got bored with it later as a teen. However I never had any need to believe in a god.

One of the fallacies of looking random events is to say a particular outcome couldn't had arrived without someone making it happen because it is too incredible to be dealt those cards. That is looking at things backward. If you are dealt a good hand in cards. You might think wow, that is pretty lucky almost magic. But that fact is you were dealt the cards that were shuffled. Now look at the statistics. The chance of winning the lottery in you lifetime is almost nothing. It is so so unlikely. However if you had unlimited source of funds (defeating the point) and could live for billions of years to create life you would have won it many times over. The very fact that we are alive to observe how lucky (in the random luck sense) we are to be here, is mainly due to the fact the majority of the universe doesn't have it. Of course we are alive so can only observe that fact, which we would not have been able to had we not come about.

The idea of something being behind the creation of the universe is not a terrible hypothesis, but what comes before that? God doesn’t “fill the gap” so to speak any different from no god.

for me it has always been an issue of getting past those people that interpret their particular scriptures in the strictest possible way except when it come to themselves. the absolute nature of their condemnation was off-putting enough but then to seem them violate their own interpretations as if those interpretations were meant only for other people pushed me out of church for a very long time.

subjugation of women and the idea that anything that is fun is also a sin are two of the dogmas that i find particularly ofensive and frustrating. i mean women should be allowed to preach too right?

Yup. I still have a very hard time with that. That and how each religion (christian) has their own way of thinking. Oh, and how every time I have gone, I feel like the "poor lost puppy" that someone feels the need to save. I thought I was a good person already.

I never had trouble when things aren't black and white. Sure it would be nice if everything is that easy, but its not. However I do have a lot of trouble accepting religion because of my tendency to simply think it through:

God is all powerful.
The Devil opposes god with some success.
= Something dosn't add up.

doublepost sry

Last edited by Xanovaria on 07 May 2009, 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm very religious.

It's more the loss of morality in this day and age that drives anti-religion. People just don't think how they used to.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
-Albert Einstein

Supposedly:
God created Beelzebub before he created humanity.
Humanity then was God's foremost and most loved creation.
It was out of jealousy that the devil can work through people tempt them and make them fall into sin.
This is what pushes human kind and God away from one another.
It is our free will that defines us as divine and that ensures our demise:

"All have fallen short of the glory of God" Romans 3:23

I have aspergers, i came from a family of hippies who were pretty anti organized religion.

Since i can remember i wanted to know more about where we are and who decided everything etc. i searched for religion since i was about 5yrs old AGAINST the wishes and advice of my family, i was drawn to it strongly. I asked questions and pondered things as a kid that most kids don't even think about... it was PART of my "differentness"

I ended up muslim as a teen and still am and always will be. It's something i understand. It was and is one of my "special interests" i've been religious since well before i knew religion.

I think aspergers is a different experience for every person, it's not a rigid way of thinking, it's a different way of thinking, Aspie culture, as i see it, is as diverse as NT culture, there are common things that make us aspie as there are common things that make NT people NT, but we are still not going to be all the same just because we are lumped together under the term Aspergers.

Last edited by Dilemma on 08 May 2009, 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

First: What does religion have to do with morality? You'll probably say it has a lot to do with it, but then you're saying that one can't be moral without being also religious, and that is simply not true. The two are not related at all, so if there is any cause of "anti-religion", it is not a loss of morality.

Second: I'm getting REALLY tired of all the "this day and age" stuff. People now think exactly the way they always have. We're really no different at all. We just have new things to think about because a lot of smart people over the ages went and figured out new things. If this is a bad thing, then what are we supposed to do with our lives? Should we all just concern ourselves with how things used to be instead of actually making any effort to know anything? I'll guarantee that the people you're thinking of (those who have this ideal way of thinking that nobody apparently has anymore) were all going on about the very same thing, worrying that the world is losing its morals and nothing is the same as it used to be.

It's natural to see that not everything in the world agrees with your ideals and want to think that that means that the whole world is somehow in decline (your ideal being, of course, IDEAL), but what you need to do is think that and then close your mouth and think a little more. Everyone feels the same way about mutually exclusive things.