Is it common for people with Asperger's to become atheist?

[Spinning Compass]

"Not a literal truth, just a lens through which I view the world and shape my decisions"--that describes my relationship to Christianity perfectly. Unfortunately that is not good enough for a lot of people who insist that I must believe exactly the way they do or I am not one of them.

 

[silent ABAB]

How do you know anything? How do you know you're not hallucinating?

All the science you know? have you personally tested it? Or read it from books you "trust"?

How much of your knowledge comes from personal experience, and how much of it comes from school and you trusting the material?

The truth is, all beliefs are "religion". It's not possible for a human being to truly "know" anything.

I'm agnostic by the way. The true scientific belief! (science is a religion as well!).

I'm sure people will disagree with what I've wrote. It's only natural.

How much of a bigoted ignoramus do you have to be to say that? I mean I thought you were being satire in the beginning but, by the end of what you said I literally wanted to break something. I've tested science, and do you know that scientists actually test what they hypothesize? IT, is literally one of the first things you learn in science, scientific method. And no, not all beliefs are religion! A "religion" is when you believe in a higher entity or deity EX: Every religion! Another thing, science is not a religion! Where could you have gotten such arrogant, biased information!? If I believe there is a cancerous tumor in my thigh, does it make it that I'm part a religion? No! If I believe in The Big Bang Theory through facts like Redshift, Steady State Theory, Background Radiation, and soon to be M-Theory, does it mean that I'm part of a religion!? NO!

 

[IContainMultitudes]

Let's please keep the discussion civil and stop the name calling. If we can't, it's probably about time to close this thread.

 

[silent ABAB]

Let's please keep the discussion civil and stop the name calling. If we can't, it's probably about time to close this thread.

Ya, sorry about that, just can't stand stuff like that in some situations.

 

[davidlorenzo41]

I actually find it kind of surprising that so many Aspies are atheists and buy into evolution wholesale, accepting it as fact. They may think they are being logical and thinking outside the box, but actually these ideas have been promoted in such a way that people are expected to accept them at face value. IMO, if you truly use logic and common sense, it doesn?t make sense not to believe in a Supreme Being.
Every effect has to have a cause, and when we see complexity we assume that an intelligent mind is behind it. If I took you to a well-built house and told you there was no builder or showed you a book and said it had no author, you?d think I was crazy. You may not have ever met the builder or the author or even know who it was, but you would take for granted that one existed. ?Every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.? (Hebrews 3:4) Conversely, if a house is abandoned, it falls apart. Scientists call that entropy, the idea that order left unattended gives way to chaos, but it doesn?t work the other way around.
Shouldn?t the same hold true for the complex, orderly universe and the complexity of living things, even the simplest life forms? Think about the Big Bang Theory. Before the Hubble telescope, the origin of the universe wasn?t an issue for atheistic scientists, since they could presume that the universe itself was eternal, that it had always existed. But when Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding, Einstein agreed that he saw ?the necessity of a beginning.? That the universe had a beginning, i.e. the Big Bang, is now very widely accepted in the scientific community. What a lot of people don?t realize is that the Big Bang Theory poses a problem, not for believers, but for atheists. If there was a Big Bang, then that begs the question of what caused the Big Bang. If the physical universe wasn?t always there, then there needs to be something or someone eternal that caused it to begin. And when you examine the complexity and precision in the universe, from the galaxy to the atom, along with the existence of information in DNA, to me that is overwhelming evidence for a being with an intelligent mind who put it all together. How can natural processes be blindly attributed to laws of nature without acknowledging that there had to be a lawgiver? The odds that any of the ?accidents? needed to make the universe and life on earth could have happened by chance, much less all of them, are so slim that they can safely be called impossible.
It has been my experience that those who choose not to believe in God usually do so either because they have been taught that belief in God is unscientific and have just accepted that, or because they see inconsistencies in religion, not because belief in intelligent design itself is illogical. For example, some of you have mentioned that there are many interpretations of the Bible. That is true, but that does not mean that there is not a correct interpretation, only that the majority haven?t found it. In fact, the Bible states that ?the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.? (1 Corinthians 3:19) And Jesus prayed, ?I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones and have revealed them to babes.? (Matthew 11:25) So the Bible itself claims to be understandable to humble ones sincerely seeking the truth, while many intellectual ones would miss its point.
If you want to find the correct interpretation of Bible passages, the key is to let the Bible interpret itself. For example, consider the monsters of Revelation. Such symbolism may be hard to understand on the surface, but by examining other parts of the Bible, you can find clues as to its meaning. If you read chapters 7 and 8 of the book of Daniel, you will find similar descriptions of monstrous beasts, but there it is explicitly stated that they represent kingdoms. So by extending that interpretation to similar passages in Revelation, wouldn?t it be reasonable to conclude that those beasts also represent political entities? Once you have that key, you have taken a step toward unlocking the mystery.
Now, I know that one of the biggest stumbling blocks for logical-minded people is what appears to be a logical fallacy: if God is love, and he is all-powerful, why would he permit suffering? Why would a loving god allow bad things to happen when he has the power to stop them? First, let me point out that many of us Aspies have found that neurotypicals find our thinking difficult to comprehend. Does the fact that they don?t understand us mean that they should deny our existence? Of course not, so why do that to God? He states at Ezekiel 18:25, ?You people will certainly say: ?The way of Jehovah is not adjusted right.? ?Is not my own way adjusted right? Are not the ways of you people not adjusted right??
However, if you let the Bible interpret itself, you can put together a picture of why God has allowed wickedness to exist until now, and how he will bring it to an end. Comparing Genesis chapter 3 with the book of Job will shed light on important issues raised by the Devil that have to be settled. Comparing Ezekiel 28:11-17 with James 1:13-14 can shed light on how an once-righteous angel could become the Devil.
For more detailed information on God?s permission of evil, evidence for intelligent design, the beasts of Revelation, and many other topics, visit www.jw.org.

 

[silent ABAB]

I actually find it kind of surprising that so many Aspies are atheists and buy into evolution wholesale, accepting it as fact. They may think they are being logical and thinking outside the box, but actually these ideas have been promoted in such a way that people are expected to accept them at face value. IMO, if you truly use logic and common sense, it doesn’t make sense not to believe in a Supreme Being.
Every effect has to have a cause, and when we see complexity we assume that an intelligent mind is behind it. If I took you to a well-built house and told you there was no builder or showed you a book and said it had no author, you’d think I was crazy. You may not have ever met the builder or the author or even know who it was, but you would take for granted that one existed. “Every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.” (Hebrews 3:4) Conversely, if a house is abandoned, it falls apart. Scientists call that entropy, the idea that order left unattended gives way to chaos, but it doesn’t work the other way around.
Shouldn’t the same hold true for the complex, orderly universe and the complexity of living things, even the simplest life forms? Think about the Big Bang Theory. Before the Hubble telescope, the origin of the universe wasn’t an issue for atheistic scientists, since they could presume that the universe itself was eternal, that it had always existed. But when Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding, Einstein agreed that he saw “the necessity of a beginning.” That the universe had a beginning, i.e. the Big Bang, is now very widely accepted in the scientific community. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the Big Bang Theory poses a problem, not for believers, but for atheists. If there was a Big Bang, then that begs the question of what caused the Big Bang. If the physical universe wasn’t always there, then there needs to be something or someone eternal that caused it to begin. And when you examine the complexity and precision in the universe, from the galaxy to the atom, along with the existence of information in DNA, to me that is overwhelming evidence for a being with an intelligent mind who put it all together. How can natural processes be blindly attributed to laws of nature without acknowledging that there had to be a lawgiver? The odds that any of the “accidents” needed to make the universe and life on earth could have happened by chance, much less all of them, are so slim that they can safely be called impossible.
It has been my experience that those who choose not to believe in God usually do so either because they have been taught that belief in God is unscientific and have just accepted that, or because they see inconsistencies in religion, not because belief in intelligent design itself is illogical. For example, some of you have mentioned that there are many interpretations of the Bible. That is true, but that does not mean that there is not a correct interpretation, only that the majority haven’t found it. In fact, the Bible states that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” (1 Corinthians 3:19) And Jesus prayed, “I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones and have revealed them to babes.” (Matthew 11:25) So the Bible itself claims to be understandable to humble ones sincerely seeking the truth, while many intellectual ones would miss its point.
If you want to find the correct interpretation of Bible passages, the key is to let the Bible interpret itself. For example, consider the monsters of Revelation. Such symbolism may be hard to understand on the surface, but by examining other parts of the Bible, you can find clues as to its meaning. If you read chapters 7 and 8 of the book of Daniel, you will find similar descriptions of monstrous beasts, but there it is explicitly stated that they represent kingdoms. So by extending that interpretation to similar passages in Revelation, wouldn’t it be reasonable to conclude that those beasts also represent political entities? Once you have that key, you have taken a step toward unlocking the mystery.
Now, I know that one of the biggest stumbling blocks for logical-minded people is what appears to be a logical fallacy: if God is love, and he is all-powerful, why would he permit suffering? Why would a loving god allow bad things to happen when he has the power to stop them? First, let me point out that many of us Aspies have found that neurotypicals find our thinking difficult to comprehend. Does the fact that they don’t understand us mean that they should deny our existence? Of course not, so why do that to God? He states at Ezekiel 18:25, “You people will certainly say: ‘The way of Jehovah is not adjusted right.’ …Is not my own way adjusted right? Are not the ways of you people not adjusted right?”
However, if you let the Bible interpret itself, you can put together a picture of why God has allowed wickedness to exist until now, and how he will bring it to an end. Comparing Genesis chapter 3 with the book of Job will shed light on important issues raised by the Devil that have to be settled. Comparing Ezekiel 28:11-17 with James 1:13-14 can shed light on how an once-righteous angel could become the Devil.
For more detailed information on God’s permission of evil, evidence for intelligent design, the beasts of Revelation, and many other topics, visit www.jw.org.

One thing before I begin, your aspie/god analogy is incorrect. You cannot compare an unknown, unseen deity to a person that is right in front of you, physically there. Another thing, not only does God(I'm going to reference to him as a person here) say to love him, he also KILLS the ones who don't, read through the Old and New Testament, how many babies/children/men and women were killed by "the hands of God" because they either had their own belief/hadn't heard of Christianity. Now, to say "you" don't understand all these things (DNA/RNA, evolution, cosmology) as a person doesn't make them understandable to other people. I suggest reading some books about those subjects to actually understand that they took billions of years to get that way. That is blindness, you see, accepting something as false when you have no information known about it other then hear-say. The rules of the universe of course you bring up, I'm glad. Lets go back to GUT, or General Unified Theory. It shows the 4 forces of the universe, and explains them in detail. Now, what would happen if those laws, say, disappeared? As fast as those laws are gone is as fast as the universe would be gone to. It's symbiosis, meaning that you can't have one without the other, Yin and Yang of the universe kind of. Now back to the Big Bang Theory(not the horrible sitcom show, although I am going to talk about something they destroyed in their show), if you read some books about it, it makes sense that there are other universes used to start this. I will reference two proofs I can bring off the top of my head. First Schrodinger's Cat, it's a paradoxical experiment that I would like to just get to the base concept about. It's synopsis pretty much states that to know what's going on inside an area where there a determining variables but you cannot see what's happening, there are two things you could do. You could either accurately depict what's going on (it's impossible) OR, you could assume that an infinite amount of situations, suggestion other universes. For the second, this goes back to GUT. Quickly get a piece of paper or small amount of thin plastic, get it electrostatically charged somehow, then put your hand on it, with some time passed you bring your hand back up, it most likely stuck to your hand. Now According to Earth's gravitational pull, and to how close you are to it, that material shouldn't have stuck, but broken the charge through gravity. That proves that the 4 forces are broken, also suggestion multiple universes that ALSO could have made ours. Now I know what you might say, "But who made those other ones? Or those multiverses in total?". At that point in time is the point where you should realize how ignorant religion has been. Hundreds of years ago, God used to be the clouds and sky, giving rain and bountiful harvest. Then when people got better science skills, got higher in the mts. and realized that wasn't where he was, they resorted to the Sun. That lasted for quite a while but soon died out after the discovery that it was just a star, a medium sized one at that. Then they said it was the stars in the sky, that those were God's eyes looking down and judging us. Then, well then he just became a "mysterious force" because religious folk and higher ups couldn't find anywhere else to place God. This idea I just told you is called the God Gap. it shows how whenever science can't explain something, religion claims it as God's work. Although nowadays there's much less a thing to say is God's doing. I read all that, by the way, and from different authors and scientists, never contradicting themselves in the books I read. Now why can't one book keep itself from contradicting ITSELF through the eyes of multiple people and accounts? Not very hard to see why.

 

[ShatteredUniverse]

Oh, yes, I know that actual scientists are more to new theories and discoveries in that way, but I was talking amateur science experts who take the most probable and accepted theory as absolute fact. The people for whom rejecting a newly disproved household myth is as difficult as adapting a rigid set of religious values is for those who aren't atheist.

I think they both seek comfort and certainty in simpler, less technical explanations and are dependent on the wisdom of someone else, whether it be a god or a scientist.

I do agree with you 100% though.

A real scientist must at all times be ready and willing to abandon any theory/conjecture/etc if its experimentally or observationally contradicted, or the evidence is consistently not there. Take SUSY (supersymmetry), for instance. The more time that elapses, it becomes more and more apparent that we're either not sufficiently advanced to experimentally confirm SUSY or that SUSY doesn't exist. And SUSY's been all the rage for quite a while now. So what are we having to do? We're having to go back to the chalkboard and see if there's another way to make M-Theory consistent without SUSY (I personally believe there is, once we rid it of it's twentieth-century shackles).

By the same token, I believe it akin to lunacy for someone to deny any theory that's been tested over and over and still stands unscathed.

 

[Biblio-Love]

I am agnostic. I believe in evolution and science, but at the same time I don't think science can disprove god. If there is a god, I suppose we humans are simple in comparison and can't comprehend him/her/it. Currently our only way of defining and understanding god is through our own faulty lenses.

 

[Flinty]

I am agnostic. I believe in evolution and science, but at the same time I don't think science can disprove god.

That's not science's job, because it is impossible to disprove anything. The people making the claim have to provide the evidence, and in this case they have mostly done a horrible job.

 

[Biblio-Love]

That's not science's job, because it is impossible to disprove anything. The people making the claim have to provide the evidence, and in this case they have mostly done a horrible job.

Logically I can state that there is no god, but I leave the possibility for the unknown. I'm not a religious person, nor do I worship at the alter of science. I am a devotee of books and the literary arts. I praise all words equally.