Aspies and Religion Poll/Social experiment

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I am curious if having Asperger's has any effect on religious beliefs. Since most organized religions rely heavily on social conformity and Aspies have such a difficult time socially, I am wondering if there are any apparent trends between religious or non-religious views and people with Asperger's. The structure that organized religion provides for Aspies would also make sense that there might be a large amount of religious Aspies...that need that "love thy neighbor (no matter how weird they are)" place. Please take the poll. You may politely discuss the results. The next poll will be about your NT partner or family religious beliefs because I have a feeling there may be a split.

Please click the link to take the Updated Poll it has more choices.

sorry, but your poll and "explanations" left out me, a "new-ager."

The poll sort of confuses me.

Agnostic - Not believing in a higher power but willing to entertain the possibility if given solid proof.
Atheist - Not believing in a higher power and no wish to.

These options technically overlap. A person can "be willing to entertain a possibility if given solid proof" and have "no wish to" believe. Most people have possibilities they dislike and have no wish to consider, but to aspire to intellectual honesty requires some willingness if the proof is considered solid enough. (I suppose you could mean "solid proof" as something less than absolutely showing a position to be correct, but I really have difficulty with conceiving the term.)

What about the Eastern philosophies

Hindu Buddha Tao Zen? etc

Such that I am God?

There are several other belief systems which do not fit your criteria either

Pagan, Satanist, Spiritualist? etc

I can't take part in your poll

Sorry

For me, the beauty of having AS is that I helps me focus INTENSELY on one or three things at a time, like a sort of laser vision. Anything out of that "vision" has been really hard for me to grasp.

One problem I had with religion growing up was that I was expected to be in church every time the doors were open, and I never could really see the point of it. It might have had something to do with the fact my grandfather was a deacon, my father a Sunday School teacher, my mom lead youth choir, my aunt played piano. You can't really get much higher up without being a preacher! My family donated the land the church sits on and, along with other landowners in the area, planted sugar cane to raise money to build it.

I never wanted to give up my beliefs, so it had nothing to do with whether I questioned whether there was a God or, later on, the destination of my soul. I just wanted a break every once in a while!

I got a BIG break when I left for college and was too far from home to faithfully go to church. The problems I had socializing--bad enough at my home church, but at least familiar--kept me from seriously searching for a new church.

And then while I was in grad school over 1,500 miles from home, I just woke up one morning and felt an intense need to go to church. So one afternoon I drove around town so I could see where all the different churches were, and I actually found, WAY up in Northern New York, a Southern Baptist church! Doctrinally everything was familiar, and it was a very comforting place to worship where my fellow congregants seemed like family. Of course, upstate NY culture is a lot different from Mississippi culture, and that was the first church I'd been to that was led by a "praise team" rather than music minister/choir. Having grown up in a predominantly traditional kind of church, it took a lot of getting-used to, and I'd previously been completely unaware that this was happening in a lot of churches everywhere.

That experience taught me, despite any social handicaps I might have (back then I didn't even know what AS was), to boldly walk into a church and continue worshipping with other believers. I have a very close, exclusive circle of friends at my church now, and being able to do what I do and otherwise keep my mouth shut keeps me out of trouble!

My present church is following a similar pattern with contemporary music. But the interesting thing I've found is that, as the church pianist, my laser-focus on music has helped me develop a wide range of musical ability on the keyboard. Something I do that not many SBC pianists (typically of the traditional, classical-training variety, same as I was when I started) do is improvise, interpret lead sheets, and play by ear. I do that kind of thing because it matches my interest and I've extended my abilities into that area. From time to time I volunteer with another performing ensemble, which takes me away a few Sundays out of the year. I make sure I inform my music minister so he can make arrangements, and typically what this means is he gets someone in who only reads notes and won't touch contemporary music.

You'd THINK that the little ol' blue-haired ladies would love it. But then they all come up to me the next week and say "We sure did miss yew last week!" They mean it, too, and these are the same ones who turn their noses up at contemporary Christian music.

So yeah, there's the music thing.

The other thing, due to being obsessive like that, is I'm extremely concerned with Biblical issues. I got to a point in my understanding of the Bible, just from sermons, Sunday School, and Bible studies that I felt group study or a book based on ONE person's perspective was just no longer cutting it. I took it upon myself to buy a good study Bible. The one I use has extensive notes that explain in detail the meaning of the text. It even points out so-called "errors" and explains why there're there (typically these are OT scribal errors, comparing one book to another and finding discrepancies between two sets of numbers. It's kinda like writing a number down for someone but forgetting where the decimal was supposed to go. Other "errors" can happen because certain Hebrew letters resemble each other enough that a scribe would confuse them when copying the text). It's a fairly critical study of the text, and it appeals to a side of me that really appreciates the Bible, and has made it for the most part a real page-turner.

It seems to me, at least with people on WP, the affect of AS has made for many the issue of religion something we either love or we hate. There don't seem to be that many who are truly indifferent to it.

If you are confused about where you are in this poll please read the updated explanation. I could obviously not list every single religion so if you do not fall within the mainstream religions please pretty please select Organized-Other. Thank you to those of you who have shared your religious experiences as an Aspie. I believe this will be very enlightening conversation in which we can all learn something.

Realize that there is a difference between spirituality and religion and this poll was mainly to see the affects of Aspergers on our choices of types of religion and not necessarily any single religion.

As far as my religion is concerned I was raised Mormon and am now Agnostic.

So far everyone has been doing great!

I fear your poll will be overwhelmed by a few factors which will negate the usefulness of your results. First that the forums are largely comprised of youth who typically have weak religious values, and even more importantly, that the net is strongly liberal in nature which biases the forum population against religiosity.

Perhaps find a forum with a similar sized population and do a matching poll there as a control.

Oh and welcome to WP.

I voted Christian due to your explanations. Personally I have a different definition of Agnostic and usually refer to myself as an Agnostic Theist.

I suppose I am an agnostic in the sense that I do not know if God, god, the gods exist or not. Furthermore I have found every argument I have read or heard for the existence of God, god, or the gods quite unconvincing. This has to do with what I know or can logically suppose.

ruveyn

My beliefs are just that, mine. I don't rely on the establishment's course for a few reasons. One being that it's obsolete. Organized religion to me however, appears to be more so about the money these days than the actual faith and teachings. Take for example Christianity. 2,000 years ago, we didn't have the scientists, physicists , education and technology that we do in these modern times to explain how and why things work. It may have worked then with mythology, but we have real answer's today. I believe in evolution, I believe we all do have a connection and that we should respect each other regardless of faith.

I don't believe in organized religion.

I am christian though.

What should I vote if I believe in Christianity but not in Christian gatherings.