What is it like to believe?

[Progster]

I'm similar. The problem with religious belief is that it asks you to believe some things which, according to my experience of the world, just don't seem possible: I need something more concrete to go on. Also, some believers - not all, but some - present those things that they believe as facts, and for me they are not. They are beliefs.

One doesn't need to have religious faith to have morals. One might believe in certain rules in society to keep it peacful and just, without having religious faith.

 

[Khendra]

Interesting

I am happy you have that solace and order! Sometimes I wish I could believe. It is a built in part of me to not be able to.

I really do like the teachings of Jesus. I believe morally in many things he said but I cannot believe in him as the son of God just because I am not wired that way. Since, in the Christian faith, God created the world and all living things... and I am a living thing... I was created by God but cannot believe in God. This is an interesting conundrum.

When I was 10 I had never been to Church and I was sent to stay with my Pentecostal Grandma for a week. Unbeknownst to me, she had registered me in vacation bible school. She gave me a red letter bible (bad choice for an impressionable young boy who is going to a Pentecostal bible school!). The first day I showed up and only knew of Jesus is this white man with long hair who looked a bit like my hippy uncle in a picture on my Grandma's wall. I was mocked for all of the questions I asked. Luckily (or unluckily) I was a voracious reader at that age and read many parts of the bible. By the middle of the week they were teaching me things that did not seem to match the teachings of Jesus or at least seemed to emphasize parts of the bible that were out of line with those red letter bits (I can't remember which...). I tended to ask about that.... Seeing people speaking in tongues was also quite scary for me.

I got yelled at for my questions like I was mocking Christianity... which added to the confusion. But this is not why I can't believe, I really wanted to!

You sound like my husband. He also likes the teachings of Jesus but disbelieves the more supernatural elements.

Sorry you were in such a Pentecostal environment. That denomination holds a host of beliefs that I disagree with as a Lutheran.

 

[AprilR]

I was an atheist but always interested in spiritual stuff. Then i started to believe (at the lowest point in my life) since i felt deserted and what little help i got from people i saw as God's help.
I don't believe that people can full empathize with each other or feel the need to help each other without a belief in God. I don't mean to say that i hate people but i feel like human understanding and empathy has a limit, what's limitless belongs to God.
A lot of things i kept to myself i know there is not a single person will understand or feel what i feel.
Only when i believe in someone that created me and knows me inside out i can see life as worthwhile. Maybe it's just wishful thinking but it is a fact that since i started to think like this my life has objectively gotten better.
I think to believe or not believe is a choice, i am a very skeptic person myself but some things i choose not to question. Because there are a million answers but you can choose whatever you like.

 

[John M]

Interesting!

I agree that "NTs" have all of the sensory issues... but they are not issues for them. Why?

Human brains run culture:

ADDers can learn human culture but do not have the "machinery" to run human culture (this happens in the pre-frontal cortex primarily).

ASD people have the "machinery" to run culture but do not have the "machinery" to learn it (early pruning of mirror neurons is one way)

The machinery running culture is highly attuned to sensory input... visual cues, voice intonation and touch.
It has nothing to do in the ASD person except get overwhelmed because there is no cultural order to these inputs.

I am extreme ADD + Extreme ASD (without the ADD... I would probably be non-verbal). So... I have neither the machinery to learn culture OR to process it. This is why I cannot believe. Culture is abstract and is built by beliefs... and none of that works in my brain. It is also why my sensory issues are very different than many aspies (they are primarily a fear of my senses being blocked.... I am more animal than human). My meltdowns are always about emotional overload as I cannot escape emotions through abstraction, culture or a belief system.

I don't think its only abstraction, culture and a belief system that helps an NT to escape emotions. Group identity plays a big part too. There's a kind of justification that happens, 'it's okay for me to feel this emotion because the group does.' Sometimes a person may even pretend they're experiencing an emotion so they can fit in.

For a lot of people on the spectrum there's a kind of emotional greenhouse effect that sometimes amplifies emotions because we don't possess this quality. We don't have a group so there's the perception that no one will understand and we're alone which causes distress and creates a kind of feedback loop.

A lot of aspies are much more connected to our unconscious minds than an NT for a variety of reasons. The unconscious is partially disconnected from the portions of the brain that verbalize. It understands verbalizations but it can't make them. Making verbalizations is the domain of the conscious mind. My unconscious can string together verbal memories to try and do something similar to speech but it's using different parts of the brain than that which verbalizes.

 

[Streetwise]

I don't believe in something imagined,

I was like you it wasn't real to me; but now I know it's real .

you will have read the New covenant, I still find English (profound English)hard to understand, but it says G-d (the Abrahamic G-d) is spirit, you experience him with mostly your spirit ,I think in old English spirit was called deep as in 'deep calls unto deep ' .

Speaking in tongues is a language you haven't heard before ,it's G-ds language ,biblical Hebrew ,different from modern Hebrew, you won't hear words like telephone unless G-d wants to,it does you good to speak in tongues .

But I'm still Autistic in Neurology so it's still, after 20 years!, taking me time to believe fully ,that's our neurology, logic based, but G-d is logical, he's Energy, you'll have heard of nuclear power ,coal power,well G-d is an infinitely stronger power ,creating humans and all other sentient beings would take that, it's better(the best)to say" G-d are you real "

Sadly some humans cut themselves off from the natural world, that includes G-d ,so that part of the being is too weak because it's being destroyed.

It's astounding what G-d will do if you allow him ,I still find it hard to allow him to do everything.

Panic disorder is infuriatingly basic but he keeps staying with me ,I don't know why ?
There's the intriguing verse' the Bible is the living word' I didn't believe that ,then I had a strange experience ,I was reading the letters in the New covenant and I'd finished a chapter, I was looking at the empty space between the end of the chapter and the start of the next ,I had the strangest feeling that part of the page was a living being ,I was floored, astounded ,discombobulated ,the Bible had always been dry ,confusing ,now it had meaning.
One thing I'm!!!!!! mind numbingly slowly learning G-d is very very perceptive ,he knows exactly how to show you!!! he's real
Sorry it's hard to keep on track ,at that moment, I could hear British comedian Nina Wadia, saying a "small aubergine" ,remembering her imitation of an Indian accent.
I'll stop.

 

[John M]

I wonder sometimes, since I believe feelings are a kind of language that both the conscious and unconscious together share, if when my mind is distressed and I experience the emotional intensity ramping up if it's not a result of my unconscious trying to get my mind's attention. For example, if I'm experiencing a lot of social anxiety and my fear is in essence clogging the communication channel between the unconscious and conscious then my unconscious may turn up the emotional volume as a way of saying, 'listen to me and I'll help you.' Depending on my emotional state it may not have other options. From experience in the past, when I listen and understand what my unconscious is trying to communicate in such situations the hurtful feelings pass much more quickly. Whether or not that's due to my mind simply listening to the smarter parts of my brain or due to my unconscious turning the emotional volume down I can't say.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

I don't think its only abstraction, culture and a belief system that helps an NT to escape emotions. Group identity plays a big part too. There's a kind of justification that happens, 'it's okay for me to feel this emotion because the group does.' Sometimes a person may even pretend they're experiencing an emotion so they can fit in.

For a lot of people on the spectrum there's a kind of emotional greenhouse effect that sometimes amplifies emotions because we don't possess this quality. We don't have a group so there's the perception that no one will understand and we're alone which causes distress and creates a kind of feedback loop.

A lot of aspies are much more connected to our unconscious minds than an NT for a variety of reasons. The unconscious is partially disconnected from the portions of the brain that verbalize. It understands verbalizations but it can't make them. Making verbalizations is the domain of the conscious mind. My unconscious can string together verbal memories to try and do something similar to speech but it's using different parts of the brain than that which verbalizes.

Agreed Group identity = culture. In the theories I have been working on: ASD (extra-cultural) is a difference in communication primarily. Learning language requires that the mirror neurons (culture learning machinery) are not pruned too far back during acquisition.

Human culture is dependent on both language and abstraction (which language is full of). "Nature" is not accurate "on purpose" (I do not feel that nature itself has plans... only things that work, things that don't and "mistakes" that may work or may not"). Even though I see ASD (Extra-cultural) as a functionality (originally for cross tribe gene spreading), there are less functional individuals. People on here are not as functional in the social context but are often highly functional in other areas. Some people end up non-verbal or unable to walk due to the mirror neurons pruning too early or possibly not pruning (less likely or I would have much worse sensory issues). My language acquisition and ability to walk may have followed a secondary route through my other "comorbidity" ADD or the specific mirror neurons in my case simply pruned later than most. (I am thinking it is the ADD in my case).

The most extreme "believers" are schizophrenic (idiosyncratic beliefs). Generally (these things are tricky) There is less grey matter in a place in the brain of schizophrenic's where there is more in ADDers... Of course these studies are looking at diagnosed schizophrenia and ADD without really knowing that these things are not disorders but functionalities. The physical stuff is pretty complex so I focus on functionality.

Regardless....

I am seriously not wired to believe.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

It's astounding what G-d will do if you allow him ,I still find it hard to allow him to do everything.

So YHWH is a him? I am interested in the view of YHWH in the biblical sense of man being created in "his" image (Imago Dei) as opposed to more of a less human looking entity (not thinking South Park here, lol). I have something in me I call "the animal". It is because I am more animal than human in many ways (no culture or functional ego). The animal is "ur human" or pre-cultural human. I can spend time in that... I am wondering if that is what people see as YHWH, G-d or many gods. It is a pretty powerful thing as it is basically a contextual processing "computer" that sees stuff that humans cannot. Most people call it intuition. This part of me is where I learn languages even though it has no language. I wonder if people speaking in tongues are accessing this.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

You sound like my husband. He also likes the teachings of Jesus but disbelieves the more supernatural elements.

Sorry you were in such a Pentecostal environment. That denomination holds a host of beliefs that I disagree with as a Lutheran.

I cannot disbelieve either... so there is that Oh... believe me , that experience with the Pentecostals was the absolute least of my worries at 10. It certainly didn't keep me from believing or make me believe (much to my Grandma's concern). It was actually nice to be away from the Hell that was home for me

My Family is mostly Presbyterian (Scots)... Lutheran is a religious group in it's "younger middle age" so it is a bit less extreme than one of the newer young splinter groups like Pentecostal. Of course there are always "pre-splinter" groups in any middle age or young religious group that are pretty extreme. By the time it becomes an old religious group it won't splinter as much and the extremists will be part of the mainstream. Religion is fascinating!

 

[Ursus Chainus]

I'm similar. The problem with religious belief is that it asks you to believe some things which, according to my experience of the world, just don't seem possible: I need something more concrete to go on. Also, some believers - not all, but some - present those things that they believe as facts, and for me they are not. They are beliefs.

One doesn't need to have religious faith to have morals. One might believe in certain rules in society to keep it peacful and just, without having religious faith.

Yes... we don't need religion to get the basic idea that hurting or killing other people is not a good thing and is immoral. We also don't need religion to convince us hurting other people or killing them is a good idea.

Belief and morality or immorality are not connected... some people just want you to think that. I would say, however, that people will do anything when they believe without reservation a deity or the human embodiment of that deity that tells them to do things that are either moral or immoral.

 

[Streetwise]

So YHWH is a him? I am interested in the view of YHWH in the biblical sense of man being created in "his" image (Imago Dei) as opposed to more of a less human looking entity (not thinking South Park here, lol). I have something in me I call "the animal". It is because I am more animal than human in many ways (no culture or functional ego). The animal is "ur human" or pre-cultural human. I can spend time in that... I am wondering if that is what people see as YHWH, G-d or many gods. It is a pretty powerful thing as it is basically a contextual processing "computer" that sees stuff that humans cannot. Most people call it intuition. This part of me is where I learn languages even though it has no language. I wonder if people speaking in tongues are accessing this.

The G-d (Judaism) idea of gender is not like pagan or other faiths ,man is both sexes Eve or woman ,is just a slightly different man, to G-d he views both as man just slight differences so he would address women as men and men as men ,one of his characteristics is the many breasted one ,I think the Hebrew name is El Shaddai,he is not many G-ds, just many characteristics, parts.

Speaking in tongues is the holy spirit controlling(not demon possession but mutual agreement) the person, not a hysterical person or imagined thought .

G-d is not intuition ,he is a separate spirit! but if you reject him, rejection is very powerful,you can't perceive his existence ,reality.

Animals are very open and don't fill their heads with crap they are sentient! but! they are not creators!, thus they don't have the capacity that G-d has for that power to be omniscient .

 

[Ursus Chainus]

The G-d (Judaism) idea of gender is not like pagan or other faiths ,man is both sexes Eve or woman ,is just a slightly different man, to G-d he views both as man just slight differences so he would address women as men and men as men ,one of his characteristics is the many breasted one ,I think the Hebrew name is El Shaddai,he is not many G-ds, just many characteristics, parts.

Speaking in tongues is the holy spirit controlling(not demon possession but mutual agreement) the person, not a hysterical person or imagined thought .

G-d is not intuition ,he is a separate spirit! but if you reject him, rejection is very powerful,you can't perceive his existence ,reality.

Animals are very open and don't fill their heads with crap they are sentient! but! they are not creators!, thus they don't have the capacity that G-d has for that power to be omniscient .

Interesting... The animal is not an animal per se... but it is connected to nature which many consider to be G-d.

Also... do we humans have the ability to be omniscient and animals do not?

So... without humans, does G-d exist? If humans cease to exist, will G-d still? Will there be a new creation? Is heaven infinite in time? If there is a new creation, then it would be people who look like us? (Imago Dei)
Is G-d the same for a tribe in the Amazon that has not had, or has had limited contact with other humans?

one of my favorite questions is this:

When I was a boy, I asked a preacher who came to my school to talk about Born Again Christianity, "what happens to the people who have never met a witness of the faith and have no knowledge of the faith?"

His answer was that "They will be asked in Heaven by Christ whether or not they submit to the will of God and accept Christ as their personal lord and savior"

I felt that was deeply unfair... Maybe the witness that spread the word of God to me was a poor messenger and I had a hard time believing... these people would get the ultimate messenger, Christ himself! Also this would mean that they never had faith but a direct experience which is a bit of a conundrum since faith is the important bit....

My second favorite question that I asked him about was a passage I read in the bible (it is actually a well known paradox)

Titus 1:12-13

These are just some interesting questions for me.

Anyway... you can see why I nearly got kicked out of vacation bible school...


Personally I am attracted to Avalokiteshivara which has many forms... some female and some male. I like it as a metaphor that calls into our compassionate nature.

 

[Streetwise]

Interesting... The animal is not an animal per se... but it is connected to nature which many consider to be G-d.

Also... do we humans have the ability to be omniscient and animals do not?

So... without humans, does G-d exist? If humans cease to exist, will G-d still? Will there be a new creation? Is heaven infinite in time? If there is a new creation, then it would be people who look like us? (Imago Dei)
Is G-d the same for a tribe in the Amazon that has not had, or has had limited contact with other humans?

one of my favorite questions is this:

When I was a boy, I asked a preacher who came to my school to talk about Born Again Christianity, "what happens to the people who have never met a witness of the faith and have no knowledge of the faith?"

His answer was that "They will be asked in Heaven by Christ whether or not they submit to the will of God and accept Christ as their personal lord and savior"

I felt that was deeply unfair... Maybe the witness that spread the word of God to me was a poor messenger and I had a hard time believing... these people would get the ultimate messenger, Christ himself! Also this would mean that they never had faith but a direct experience which is a bit of a conundrum since faith is the important bit....

My second favorite question that I asked him about was a passage I read in the bible (it is actually a well known paradox)

Titus 1:12-13

These are just some interesting questions for me.

Anyway... you can see why I nearly got kicked out of vacation bible school...


Personally I am attracted to Avalokiteshivara which has many forms... some female and some male. I like it as a metaphor that calls into our compassionate nature.

The preacher answered your question completely correctly if the tribe in Amazon never get in contact with the ruach ha kodesh (the holy spirit) then they would be asked that question, the problem is you thought the way the Pharisees did ,how can we catch out the Messiah ?!he's popular so we can't openly attack him ,we'll have to be deceitful play games but Yeshua(Jesus)was too intelligent,You forgot that you'd asked a very specific question ,the Bible has very specific answers,but you didn't in your very childish self centred mind remember what you'd asked ,you just reacted afterwards in an emotional way ,if you'd correctly asked would the ruach ha kodesh(holy spirit)search for them himself ,yes he might !but only be knows if he did,the power of G-d is very appealing if you are in Heaven so they will give the answer they give they have free will ,but people want it all their own way they want Heaven but not to be obedient .

 

[Ursus Chainus]

The preacher answered your question completely correctly if the tribe in Amazon never get in contact with the ruach ha modest (the holy spirit) then they would be asked that question, the problem is you thought the way the Pharisees did ,how can we catch out the Messiah ?!he's popular so we can't openly attack him ,we'll have to be deceitful play games but Yeshua(Jesus)was too intelligent,You forgot that you'd asked a very specific question ,the Bible has very specific answers,but you didn't in your very childish self centred mind remember what you'd asked ,you just reacted afterwards in an emotional way ,if you'd correctly asked would the ruach ha kodesh(holy spirit)search for them himself ,yes he might !but only be knows if he did,the power of G-d is very appealing if you are in Heaven so they will give the answer they give they have free will ,but people want it all their own way they want Heaven but not to be obedient .

Hmmm,

Well I did not set out to "catch" the Messiah as I cannot believe in the Messiah. It was simply a question based on what I saw as a logical inconstancy. I certainly was not emotional... which is the hallmark of me not being able to believe. As far as being a self centered child... I am a self centered adult in the sense that I do not center myself on a specific belief system or religion. I am not "other" centered. I am certainly not obedient to something that I cannot believe in. This does not mean that I am not compassionate. I care deeply about people.

In fact, I feel I am more compassionate than "Christ centered people" I know who feel that separating children from their parents at the US border is just fine because the parents "violated the law".

Remember: Matthew 19:14 and the phrase "WWJD?"

I have a hard time understanding these things because I learned from a red letter bible. I found that many (not all) Christians seem to have an emphASIS on the wrong sylABLes at the very best and self delusion at the worst. I am not saying they are bad people... just focused more focused on their fear of people different from them than their love of Jesus.

I also know some red letter Christians, I tend to get along best with those

I wonder... if we are visited by technologically advanced aliens from another planet that have their own religion and they send missionaries here to tell us the good word, what non-red letter Christians would do.

Maybe the aliens would set us all up in long houses where we all sleep together and force homosexuality because that is the word of their God. Maybe they would bring diseases that kill most of us during their spreading the gospel.

Interesting thought experiment. Don't forget the crusades and the missionaries that killed so many by spreading disease. They killed many before they could convert them.

Anyway... I lack a brain configuration that allows me to believe... but I am very happy that it helps you make sense of your life

 

[Wolfsage]

what happens to the people who have never met a witness of the faith and have no knowledge of the faith?"

Read up on Abarham and what God told him about ten good men. I go by King James Version Bible.

As for what beleif feels like. The actual feeling for me anyway is happy and peaceful. Of course mine started very young. From before I could speak. Or even knew words. There was a presence with me. I knew it well. It was "friend" in your tongue. I didn't know the word or what it meant. But this gave the impression of the word. What that word would feel like in your mind. Not danger or scary. Just an impression of "trust" and your "safe". Again it was the feeling one would associate with those words. It didn't use words to speak with me. Just impressions of the words meaning threw feeling in my mind. Bare in mind this happened when I was very young. But I do remember.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

Read up on Abarham and what God told him about ten good men. I go by King James Version Bible.

As for what beleif feels like. The actual feeling for me anyway is happy and peaceful. Of course mine started very young. From before I could speak. Or even knew words. There was a presence with me. I knew it well. It was "friend" in your tongue. I didn't know the word or what it meant. But this gave the impression of the word. What that word would feel like in your mind. Not danger or scary. Just an impression of "trust" and your "safe". Again it was the feeling one would associate with those words. It didn't use words to speak with me. Just impressions of the words meaning threw feeling in my mind. Bare in mind this happened when I was very young. But I do remember.

How did that feeling turn into a belief in Christ as opposed to another god or a general spiritual sense of the world? If someone in a tribe, that believes the world is the shell of a turtle that is the creator, feels these feelings... would they associate that with Christ or the turtle god?

Why did my same feeling of this lead to Science being the primary way in which I seek to understand my world?

Do you mean the ten good men that could not be found in Sodom and Gommorah, so God destroyed those towns? What is a good man? Is a man good even if he does not believe in Christ? Should Christians destroy those that are irredeemable? You can probably see that I am irredeemable in that I cannot believe... I will not abide in that I cannot follow God's will... 1 John 2:17.

I am not questioning your faith...I am just curious about how you came to believe in the Bible. I am also interested in the emphasis on the Old Testament for many Christians . It seems as though the Old testament is quoted so much more than the new testament.

Mathew 5:17-48 seems to distance Christians from many of the views in the Old Testament. Of course it does not counter the old rules...but it is a BIG change in emphasis.

"It has been said... but I say unto thee...."

 

[Wolfsage]

If you read closely about Abraham. You come to understand. He was the only one God spoke with. He saved Lot and his family aside from Lot's wife who looked back at the city and was turned into a pillar of salt. Outside of them there were no others. But the significance is in the statement he would have spared the whole city if he found ten good men. Aside from Abraham and eventually his family and people. No one else seemed to know God. So these ten good men. We're likely people who didn't know God.

 

[Wolfsage]

What is a good man? Is a man good even if he does not believe in Christ? Should Christians destroy those that are irredeemable? You can probably see that I am irredeemable in that I cannot believe... I will not abide in that I cannot follow God's will..

Let me explain a bit. God is the God of love above all else. Love for his creations. A man chooses his fate and what he believes. God gave us free will. We know this to be true. Because of choice. The ability to think freely and have different opinions. Humans were not the first to receive it. The angels were.

As for Christian's destroying the irredeemable. There as no such thing as irredeemable unless a man chooses to think that way. Aside from one sin.

As for you. I think you do believe. Your just asking questions to try to understand. God's will. I have tried to learn more about it. There is so much complexity in it. Details so many details he keeps track of all of them. About every aspect of reality and he understands all of it. It's thinking on a level we can barely grasp the concept to.

As for where that plan leads. Check Revelations. Also be aware science is only a partial understanding of the reality we are in. A reality that will change one day for all of us.

 

[Wolfsage]

I am not questioning your faith...I am just curious about how you came to believe in the Bible. I

My family at first. Though I already had faith as you read yourself. Overtime things clicked into place like puzzle pieces. Making sense or being proven as true by life itself.

 

[Ursus Chainus]

If you read closely about Abraham. You come to understand. He was the only one God spoke with. He saved Lot and his family aside from Lot's wife who looked back at the city and was turned into a pillar of salt. Outside of them there were no others. But the significance is in the statement he would have spared the whole city if he found ten good men. Aside from Abraham and eventually his family and people. No one else seemed to know God. So these ten good men. We're likely people who didn't know God.

Thanks for explaining