AS Atheism

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jimb424
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05 Oct 2009, 10:51 am

drowbot0181 wrote:

jimb424 wrote:

drowbot0181 wrote:

I'm an agnostic atheist.

Does that mean you don't read Richard Dawkins?

No, I quite enjoy his work. But I disagree with his and most people's use of the terms agnostic and atheist. They are NOT mutually exclusive. Gnosticism is about what you know or claim to know and theism is about what you believe. These are two separate things.

People who claim to be agnostic are really agnostic atheists. There is just so much stigma attached to the term atheist that people shy away from it.

Here is a good article that explains the definitions better than I can: http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php? ... ic_atheist

No offense to anybody here, but I actually get a bit annoyed with people that say "I'm not an atheist, I'm agnostic" with that air of superiority. It's really just foolish.

Can someone be agnostic, meaning they don't "know" any religion and still believe there is a God/Gods/Creator/Whatever?

Glutamate
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05 Oct 2009, 11:07 am

This position is called Deism.
We have two deist

Is a good question. My therapist (specialist in autism) says the population are similar in aspies and neurotypicals.

drowbot0181
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05 Oct 2009, 11:08 am

jimb424 wrote:

drowbot0181 wrote:

jimb424 wrote:

drowbot0181 wrote:

I'm an agnostic atheist.

Does that mean you don't read Richard Dawkins?

Can someone be agnostic, meaning they don't "know" any religion and still believe there is a God/Gods/Creator/Whatever?

Yes, you can be an agnostic theist.

drowbot0181
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05 Oct 2009, 11:13 am

Glutamate wrote:

This position is called Deism.
We have two deist

Is a good question. My therapist (specialist in autism) says the population are similar in aspies and neurotypicals.

Deism is slightly different than gnostic or agnostic theism. Both theists and deists believe in some form of god, but deism lacks the supernatural aspects of theism. Deism is more of a philosophical state than a religion.

Glutamate
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05 Oct 2009, 11:15 am

drowbot0181 wrote:

Glutamate wrote:

This position is called Deism.
We have two deist

Is a good question. My therapist (specialist in autism) says the population are similar in aspies and neurotypicals.

DW_a_mom
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05 Oct 2009, 11:44 am

ToughDiamond wrote:

jimb424 wrote:

Are there more Atheists here among the AS people?

I was surprised to discover there were any religious people here at all, considering the Aspie tendency towards independence of thought and logic, and the NT tendency to follow crowds and leaders. These days I'd guess that a survey would possibly show some trend in that direction, but not a particularly strong one. I suppose the key is in understanding why anybody becomes religious in the first place, but that's beyond me. I have no idea why anybody ever believes anything....from my viewpoint, if I don't know the answer to a question (such as "is there a god?"), then I don't know, and attempting to apply "faith" (whatever that is) is quite alien to me.....I could act as though a thing were true even though I didn't know whether it was or not, which according to one New Testament story is faith, but in my mind I would still have to admit that I didn't know. Is there a difference between actually thinking that there is a god, and just forcing the assumption on oneself without it being the result of diligent thought?

I don't even know if I qualify as an atheist or merely an agnostic.....many times I'm tempted to just say "it's obvious that there are no gods," and I nearly always act on the assumption that there isn't, but in a more mellow mood I'd have to admit that there's no way to utterly disprove the existence of anything. If I had to guess, I'd say there isn't, and I'd feel fairly confident in the correctness of that guess. I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility of there being a deity, but frankly I've yet to see a shred of hard evidence that there is, so for all practical purposes there isn't, as far as I'm concerned.

This is really nicely written.

My AS son, so far, buys into the faith in which we are raising him. He did not, however, do it blindly. Fortunately, we aren't literal about the Bible, so it was easier for him to merge faith and logic; he had a little freedom. When he was 9 or so he confidently told me, "God is science and science is God." Would he have bothered if faith wasn't part of his cultural identity (similar to being from California, similar to having 1/2 Dutch ancestry, and so on)? Probably not. But since its part of his extended family hertigage, he found a way to believe in it. He goes to religion class once a week and his teachers have always adored him; he asks the best questions and shares the most insight, they tell me. I think its really cool.

Overall, based only on what I've read in these forums and applying my own logic, I would say that AS are less likely to be religious or hold faith. I would have said less likely to be spiritual, in general, but a few of those have popped up in this thread, so now I'm less sure, although I still would assume it isn't that common among AS. People who describe themselves as merely spiritual is something I come across in real life often, in the very liberal part of the world in which I live. People who follow no religion or practice, but say they are "spiritual" as in have a faith in God but in a rather undefined way.

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jimb424
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05 Oct 2009, 11:52 am

drowbot0181 wrote:

Glutamate wrote:

This position is called Deism.
We have two deist

Is a good question. My therapist (specialist in autism) says the population are similar in aspies and neurotypicals.

Damn Drow...

I wish I could care as much about football stats as I care about this terminology. I would have more friends.

Tell me you know whether a MXR Dynacomp is true bypass or whether that bypass is effective to avoid pedal chain tone suck, and I will come to Phoenix to visit.

jimb424
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05 Oct 2009, 11:55 am

Acacia wrote:

this is all fascinating sociological stuff here.

I'm not atheist.

Check out Non-dualistic Vedanta, which falls under the umbrella of Hinduism. That's me :wink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta

This?

Nityānitya vastu viveka — The ability (viveka) to correctly discriminate between the eternal (nitya) substance (Brahman) and the substance that is transitory existence (anitya).
Ihāmutrārtha phala bhoga virāga — The renunciation (virāga) of enjoyments of objects (artha phala bhoga) in this world (iha) and the other worlds (amutra) like heaven etc.
Śamādi ṣatka sampatti — the sixfold qualities of śama (control of the antahkaraṇa[7][8]), dama (the control of external sense organs), uparati (the refraining from actions; instead concentrating on meditation[citation needed]), titikṣa (the tolerating of tāpatraya), śraddha (the faith in Guru and Vedas), samādhāna (the concentrating of the mind on God and Guru).
Mumukṣutva — The firm conviction that the nature of the world is misery and the intense longing for moksha (release from the cycle of births and deaths).

Izaak
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05 Oct 2009, 11:57 am

To those that wonder that austistcs might be theist or "deist" in persuasion. The ore characteristic fo Aspergers and Autism is a fact based thinking. Fact based thinking and logical fallacies are not mutually exclusive

For a person can be a fact based thinker and still believe in illogical things like deism and theism and god and spirituality.

Logically god doesn't exist. Theism is a belief in god and Agnosticsim is saying that one can not possibly know. Theism is denying the axiom existence exists. That that which there is no evidence for exsists exists is logically absurd. And to deny the possibility of thinking about it is absurd also. Logically one must look at the evidence and draw conclusions. Theism asserts a god exists. Logically there is no evidence for that hypothesis, so it SHOULD be dismissed. Agnosticism says we can not know such a thing. Which is true. But it is only one half of the equation. It takes the jurist point of view. All the evidence points to innocent so we shall draw the conclusion... "not guilty." Which is fine legally speaking. But not philosophically speaking.

So again.. fact based thinking DOES NOT autmatically equal logical thiking. Austistics can be just as confused and irrational as NT's. (and Non-nt, non autistics for that matter)

edit: it's one am and i'm tired... grammar and spelling corrections... (and more importantly logical corrections)... though original objectors shall be addressed.

Last edited by Izaak on 05 Oct 2009, 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Acacia
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05 Oct 2009, 12:14 pm

jimb424 wrote:

Not exactly. That is taken a bit out of context. There are countless interpretations of the fundamental principal of Advaita Vedanta, which goes something like this:

"Brahman (Absolute Reality or Infinite Consciousness) is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and individual self."

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Last edited by Acacia on 05 Oct 2009, 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lelia
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05 Oct 2009, 12:14 pm

This likely out to be in the philosophy and religion section.
Because of the historical record of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am a Christian. However, I don't FEEL belief but rarely. My husband and I took the Time magazine test on whether or not we had the brain type to be believers, and the results showed that we should be raging atheists.

If I did not accept the historicity of the resurrection, I could not be a Christian. I would be an agnostic saying that spiritual matters cannot be proved or disproved. I would belong to ZPG. I might have let my violent daughter with autism plus die instead of working so hard to keep her alive so that she could continue to make my life a misery. (fortunately we both have happy endings as I am retired from caring for her 24/7 and she loves her home and situation.) I know I would be a lot richer without the tithe to the church and offerings beside. Life would be easier in many ways, plus less embarrassing because of some my co-believers.
I do read Dawkins and Gould and many others. If I were an atheist, I would find Dawkins an embarrassment.

jimb424
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05 Oct 2009, 12:29 pm

Izaak wrote:

To those that wonder that austistcs might be theist or "deist" in persuasion. The commonc diagnosis fo Aspergers and Autism is a fact based thinking. It does not preclude a belief in the supernatural.

For one can be a fact based thinker and still believe in illogical things like deism and theism and god and spirituality.

Logically god doesn't exists and can not exist. Theism is a belief in god against evidence. And Agnosticsim (as it is classically defined) is a refusal to see the difference between atheism and deism. Or, more accurately, a refusal to think about it. Atheism is the acceptance that no thing that can not be prooved does not exist (untill evidence comes along). To those that are familiar with Carl Sagan see "There is a Dragaon in my garage" for an excellent discussion of just that point.

So again.. fact based thinking DOES NOT autmatically equal logical thiking. Austistics can be just as confused and irrational as NT's. (and Non-nt, non autistics for that matter)

I disagree. Logically God either exists or he doesn't. No way to prove it.

Where logic comes into play is when a religion tells me God's name is Stephen and he wants us to eat Jelly Beans every Wednesday.

I suspect that many of us with AS have this "problem" with religion.

Willard
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05 Oct 2009, 12:31 pm

Izaak wrote:

Logically god doesn't exists and can not exist.

This is an illogical statement. It assumes that the speaker has at his/her disposal all possible knowledge. To conclude that anything CAN or CAN NOT be, is an assumption based on what information one has at one's immediate disposal and precludes the notion that one may not have enough information on which to base such an arrogant point of view.

Humanity and humanity's base of knowledge is still at far too limited a stage to assert definitively that the universe in which we live exists entirely by cosmic accident and could not possibly be (even in part) the result of some type of intelligent design. The choice to accept that point of view as FACT is as much an act of faith as belief in any religion.

If I design and build a machine, then set it in motion and leave the room, are the microbes on the machine's surface qualified to determine whether or not I still (or ever did) exist?

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05 Oct 2009, 12:43 pm

Quote:

historical record of the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

Thanks! You've just cheered me up, although probably not in the way you've expected.

Historical? Christianity? :mrgreen:

Christianity as you know it largely came to being in the 2nd and 3rd century, NOT when Christ was supposedly around, and has a vast VAST number of elements from the previous pagan religions. Mithra and Osiris to name the two. Oh yes, they too had 12 disciples, walked the Earth performing miracles, there were the three kings, the virgin birth, the bright star, etc etc. Same old story! In other words, the core of christinanity was largely manufactured 200 years after the death of Christ, in order to sway the plaebians to abandon their old religions and embrace this new one.

We don't even know if Christ's body really disappeared from the tomb because about half a dozen previous gods and deities have also "resurrected" after precisely 3 days. Where are those gods now? So like I said those earlier beliefs were retroactively applied to Christianity. And even if the body did disappear, isn't it far more likely that his followers broke into the tomb, took the body, and reburied it somewhere so it wouldn't be desecrated?

Come on. There is no evidence of any sort. Stop this nonsense already.

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05 Oct 2009, 12:58 pm

I am an agnostic with a unattainable desire to be a believer. Religions are fascinating to me and I truly wish I had faith in one (oddly non-specific, I have studied many religions and they all appeal to me in different ways).

I have studied about the practices and have tried to join in however I never get far because I lack the basic faith on which the practices are founded.

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Izaak
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05 Oct 2009, 12:58 pm

Willard wrote:

Izaak wrote:

Logically god doesn't exists and can not exist.

That is incorrect. Logic is non-contradictory identification. If one introduced the prospect of an omniscient infalliable benevolant creator of the universe then one must support evidence of ones conclusions. Logically god (as traditionally claimed) does not and CAN NOT exist. Logic also would assume the fact that knowledge is NOT infalliable and NOT omniscient. It would say that we MIGHT by created by an intelligent being but to all intents and purposes NO (bold) evidence has yet confirmed this proposition and at current appears entirely unlikely.

And the fact that every logically supported discovery points against every currently asserted "for" case should bear absolutely no weight in final judgement speaks volumes.

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