I have a question for only Christian aspies

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It isn't terrible, just silly. It is a lot better than Platonism in most ways. It is just that with a theistic determinist, our moral intuitions are sucked into that black hole.


*sigh* Oh yeah, that's why you have to love conservative Christians. God is good, God is holy, God gives morality, God is whatever the f*** He feels like and we have to accept what this is as "good", "holy", and "moral", making all of the earlier superlatives worthless and dead.

I don't see compatibilism as any more stupid than metaphysical libertarianism.

Free Will: You cause your own actions.
Determinism: Everything (at least at the macroscopic level) follows a complicated chain(s) of causation.
Indeterminism: Some events are uncaused at the macroscopic level.
Libertarianism: Free Will is true and indeterminism is true.

I don't see any sense or any coherence into combining free will with either determinism or indeterminism. It seems to be a horribly ambigious idea either way you splice it.

Perhaps what's really messing this up is the tricky and disolvable notion of a unitary "self".

Well, an Open Theist or even a Dualist can hold to libertarianism as being a divine mystery or a function of the immaterial mind, respectively. That allows them to stay fairly consistent with their own beliefs, even if I think their beliefs are probably wrong. Compatibilism is P AND ¬P, and therefore it is BS no matter what.

Well, P seems to be "Macroscopically, everything is part of a chain or several chains of causuation" and Free Will is the belief that "You cause you're own actions", so I don't see how it's ¬P. As a matter of fact, you're whole argument seems to be based on overprecision - assuming that Free Will is fleshed out as a concept more explicitly than it really is.

No, I mean exactly what I said. A lot of those beliefs clearly were not consistent with the Gospel. As to the actions of those who persecuted unbelievers, I cannot condone those actions. Those things were clearly wrong and contrary to the message of Jesus, and most believers today would agree. In the book of John, it is written that Jesus "did not come into the world to condemn it, but that through Him the world would be saved." No church leader at ANY time had a God-justified reason to condemn unbelievers. The Bible teaches us that right is set aside for God alone for unbelievers at the end of their lives. Your salvation is between you and God. It is not for man to decide.

As to the charge leveled against me being a hypocrite: I do my very best not to be a hypocrite, therefore I do my best to examine my beliefs and put them into practice to the best of my ability. I'm not judging anyone more harshly than anyone else, just pointing out a few examples for the sake of brevity. You pointed out atheism. This is just opinion, of course, but TECHNICALLY atheism isn't false teaching since false teaching typically refers to early church leaders twisting around the words of scripture to suit their purpose. A modern example would be the so-called blab-it-and-grab-it "Prosperity Gospel," though THEY like to say "name it and claim it," possibly a sacred origin for the secular "Law of Attraction" that is so popular lately. Atheists aren't TECHNICALLY false prophets because a true Biblical prophet could be tested. If a prophet said something that came true, he or she was a true prophet of God. If it didn't happen, he or she was a "false prophet." When I refer to "false prophets," I literally mean fake Christians (yeah, we have posers, too, and they aren't nice people) who make prophetic statements that are clearly false. Atheism belongs in a whole other category, but yes, it is contrary to Christian teaching because acknowledgement of God is inherently requisite for salvation (there's more to it than that--acceptance of Jesus' atonement for us based on faith alone buys you the fire insurance, but that also assumes you believe Jesus is the Son of God, which in turn means you have to believe in the God He comes from).

No, I don't agree with their actions. God wants His people to follow Him out of their own free will, not by force. At the same time, I think it would be unfair to label all of them as bad people. I think most of them wanted to do the right thing. But they had a lot of growing up to do, too. I think they reacted out of fear, made some horrible mistakes, and set dangerous precedents. Another way to look at it is as good people who do bad things. If we're being honest, we have to admit we are ALL guilty of that, and that applies to believers and unbelievers alike. Yes, I have to include myself here.



Ha ha! Good one. No, I don't accept the possibility of faeries, but thanks for actually following the logic on that. To answer your comment, a Christian must go beyond the realm of simple logic and reason. This is actually an issue I've struggled with in my own spiritual life and only in recent years even managed to come up with an answer I could be satisfied with. The whole logic thing is obviously a trap for those who want to logically disprove the existence of God, which at least opens the window to other possibilities that a seeker just has to decide for himself/herself. We Christians are often accused of being "unquestioning" and "clouded minds," as one poster put it. To be fair, I won't deny that there are legit reasons for that accusation. I, for one, have questioned Christian teachings from a very young age, though my hunger for knowledge and my searching has always been FOR God, not simply a patent rejection of faith. "Seek (God) and you will find (God)," parentheticals mine to reinforce the context of the quote. So at one point in my life I was trying to use science to reconcile the existence of God, and I went through several stages of this kind of reasoning before I was forced to concede that a scientific explanation was incompatible with my beliefs.

Without getting into those stages of conclusions, let me just say that I found scientific reasoning to be largely a man-made concept. I believe God gave ALL humans the gift of curiosity about our universe along with the gifts of logic and reasoning if for no other reason than to develop survival skills. But we all know we often feel compelled to learn more, to reach for more, and God has not denied us that freedom. Thus science represents a compendium of all human knowledge and observations that we have so far acquired. The things we have learned through careful observation have in turn have allowed us the opportunities to do some amazing things given specific knowledge (space exploration, such as it is, and modern medicine, just to name two examples).

In order to make these observations, one must use the senses to gather and interpret a specific form of data: Data that relates to the PHYSICAL world.

That's where my flirtation with science ended as a selling point for my beliefs. Why? I felt I'd be teaching a false doctrine and could no longer do that in good conscience. Don't take that out of context! Science isn't false doctrine. Using it to promote my beliefs, however, would be. Because science only seeks to explain the NATURAL, it by it's own nature cannot explain God. I'm sure the atheists out there are shouting "DUH!" But for me that was a profound revelation. If God could be proven, why would there even be NEED for faith?

The answer to this dilemna is in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. The rich man begs for Abraham to send someone to witness to his brothers. Abraham basically replies that his brothers were shown the same signs and testimony that the rich man had--if the rich man wouldn't believe, what made him think his brothers would?

In the OT, people found it easy to believe in God as long as he maintained a physical presence among them. After He left them in his physical form (after delivering them to Canaan), there was no need for Him to stick around. That generation did a good job of transmitting knowledge of the God that had physically been in their presence to their children, but it wasn't long before they lost faith. Very soon after the Exodus began, the Israelites lost faith in God EVEN THOUGH He did maintain a physical presence with them, and it cost them their inheritance (which was given to their children who WERE faithful).

Although I believe that God can and does work THROUGH natural means or manipulation of nature, it doesn't attest to God's power as a supernatural being. NOTHING can explain how Joshua simply asked for a few extra hours of daylight for a battle--and GOT IT. We, through our observation of nature can only begin to imagine what kind of natural phenomena would be required to halt the rotation of Earth, and then allow it to resume. If you were to conjecture that it's scientifically POSSIBLE that a convergence of natural forces could make it happen, I'm sure (I'm not a scientist or mathematician) that the probability is too remote for any reasonable and logical person to imagine that it actually did happen. I like to think it WAS impossible with NO probability of ever happening. Yet the Bible records that it did happen, and the only way I believe it could have is if there was some kind of supernatural intervention.

The natural probabilities and/or possibilities involved are up for debate, of course, but I hardly see the point. The point is that believers aren't, nor should they be, concerned with man-made constructs such as our understanding of statistics as well as scientific observation in which to prove/disprove God. Not that those things are bad, like I already said. I just think it all means that God is too big for the confines of human senses. Perceiving God depends on the kind of faith that always supersedes human logic and judgment, and I get the feeling that unbelievers, especially aspies who tend to obsess over concrete things like that (as opposed to aspies like me who obsess over spirituality!) have a really hard time getting past material observation that only appeals to the senses.

As far as the remaining discussions go, at the time I'm writing this they seem to be more deeply philosophical on more technical or academic issues than I feel qualified to discuss. I only had one semester of philosophy, and mostly what I got out of it was a bunch of great thinkers who thought great things that didn't really mean that much to me. My answer at the end of the semester was basically that I draw my own conclusions and don't need anybody, especially a dead European, to tell me how to think. I got a B in the class.

Last edited by AngelRho on 03 Apr 2010, 2:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wait, are you saying that you hate white people??? I mean, a "dead European"? Not a "dead Asian", or a "dead African", or a "dead native American"? I can't believe all of the race-hate I see!

(Yes, I am just joking.)

Saying I I liked it doesn't preclude poking a little fun at you.

I once had an excellent Penn and Teller book revealing how certain magic tricks were preformed. They had a phrase, "concluding the assumption", that I really enjoyed.

Interestingly, the Greeks basic laws of geometry are presupposition. "The sum of the angles in every triangle is 180°". Its logically evident, right? It better damn well be true too, but how do you measure that first inch?

Awesomelyglorious: It's does my heart good to see someone bring a sense of humor to the table! Humor is something often lost on me, so I apologize if I ever take things TOO literally. It is something I struggle with.

And I'm really not a bigoted person. I hate all races equally!

Confirmation bias?

Yes, if taken out of context! But that is a specific Biblical passage that is actually taken from two of the Gospels, one of which is Matthew 7:7-8, which says: Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching and you will find. Keep knocking and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

One group I like to pick on (watch out, I'm about lay some judgment on you! ) are the Unitarian/Universalists. I like to think of them as an organized religion of unorganized religion. They are fond of referring to themselves as "seekers," and they are often criticized for jumping from one set of ideals to another, wherever whim and philosophical fashion takes them and without settling on one particular thing or another. While I strongly advocate for careful discernment of truth, one must assume that there is some truth to be found. My criticism of UUs is that they seem to follow an creed of "I make up my mind that I will never make up my mind." So, paradoxically, if Christians are guilty of confirmation bias, then so are UUs in that they effectively follow the "seek and you will find" rule because their particular bias would have the statement read: "Seek nothing and you will find nothing." Biblical seeking implies that there is something of value to find. UU seeking does not have an absolute goal which, in my humble opinion, reduces UU societies into a spiritual flavor of the month club. To their credit, on the other hand, the honest ones will admit that a member's journey may actually lead to the answer which may in turn lead a seeker away from the congregation, BUT that seeker will always be welcome to visit any time (in direct contrast to Jehovah's Witness disfellowship policy).

That's not me hatin' on UUs! They're just a good example of what Biblical seeking is not. There's another side of this, though.

You have to ask "Why is it a believer can keep asking for something and still not get it?" That fact would seem to contradict Jesus' own words. For that, you have to understand the context of the statement and who it was Jesus was talking to in order to understand how that applies today. The people He was addressing were fellow Israelites. Hebrew language custom (of course, it's more likely that He and the people He preached to spoke Aramaic) was that people often spoke in exaggerated terms. Jesus used this to demonstrate the power of a believer's faith. He clarifies this statement in Matthew 7:9 when he says "What man among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?" So even though we may seek, say, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," what we may actually find is that God provides our needs and not every whim and wish we ask for.

Another classic example of obvious exaggeration that those people would have understood is Mark 11:23: I assure you: If anyone says to this mountain, "Be lifted up and thrown into the sea," and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Jesus could have picked any object he wanted to demonstrate his point, and the mountain was just a convenient object that he picked out of the air. The point Jesus was trying to make was to show exactly how big a believer's faith ought to be. In actual practice, throwing a mountain into the sea would have to be for the genuine glorification of God the Father and an acknowledgment of His power. A believer throwing a mountain into the sea, however, only serves to glorify the believer. I'm sure if we wanted to, we could come up with numerous other reasons why it would be contrary to God's will to undertake such a rearrangement of landscape on a supernatural level (though it IS possible to move or at least alter mountains through human and mechanical effort).

And finally, confirmation bias is more properly referenced in scientific research as a means of collecting information. Information about God, which by nature is different from human data-collecting, has the Bible as its sole written source with all the information a seeker or believer needs to draw conclusions about spiritual matters. That's why I say "Seek God and you will find God." At the very heart of the matter, I think this is a Christian's chief concern and mission which is by nature one-sided. Confirmation bias would be inappropriate in judging the accuracy of spiritual writing, while in the secular world it is a very dangerous way to make a point (yet it happens every day in contemporary research).

Since when am I a Unitarian Universalist?

Always.

God sovereignly declared you were to be a Unitarian Universalist in his Trinitarian Calvinist world-damning ways.

I was kidding. The judgment I was referring to was the tendency Christians are often accused of. I only meant, in a half-joking way, that judgment was about to pour forth from my agile fingers. I wasn't calling YOU a UU, and my statement wasn't meant to imply that.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8[/youtube]





Just exactly HOW does being introverted and asocial constitute falling away from God? AFAIC if God wanted everyone to be extroverted social butterflies then he wouldn't have created Autism/AS in the first place.

Thank you AnnePande and AngelRho for your responses to my post.

AnnePande: You're right, I think once I'm more comfortable in personal relationships I'll be more comfortable about talking about my relationship with God.

There aren't that many real-life people that I don't feel awkward or self-conscious when I'm with them. It's too easy to project that onto God, even though intellectually I know he's beyond NT or AS or whatever. I don't know what "happens between me and God"---I just know that my "God moments" are usually not the times when I sit down for prayer and end up frustrated about having to have a conversation, but are times when I am not obliged to visualize or verbalize. Like when I'm taking a walk, or washing dishes. I have a lot of anxiety surrounding social interaction that are extended to "talking with God"--am I talking too much and not listening? Am I really listening or am I just imposing what I think on the other other interlocutor? Can I sense what the other interlocutor is feeling? Should I panic if I'm not picking up a response from the other person? I'm so traumatized by failed social interactions and friendships as a child that it's difficult for me to approach the relationship with God as a personal friendship or intimate relationship. And even though I know on a theoretical level the need for relationships and intimacy, I have a hard time internalizing it and really feeling it deep down.

When I approach God, I go without my defenses, my masks, my pretend-to-be-NT self. There is no other way. However, being vulnerable in this state of naked Aspie-ness is a state I have come to loathe. Intellectually I know this is not a problem because Jesus will raise the weak and the meek will inherit the earth and all that, but deep down it's not comfortable. Herein lies my dilemma. I cannot communicate with God except in my real self. But my real self is uncomfortable about communicating. Thus I go wash my dishes and if God wants to hang out in silence then, He's welcome to.

AngelRho: Rituals are comforting to me because routine helps me focus and be more relaxed, and knowing when exactly to expect what kind of social interaction is comforting. Also, they provide a structure for when I don't know how to verbalize something or communicate something. Various symbolisms are also very powerful for me because they give me the freedom to understand and internalize and have a personal connection to a certain concept in my own way. In a way they are a bridge between me and other people of the faith---we can refer to the same symbol and know that we're talking about the same concept, without the necessity of arguing what is the right way to understand it. I organize information and experiences so differently from most of the population that it's much easier to have a way to abstract from all that.

By the way, while I do have many issues, in real life interacting with other people I'm way better adjusted than I may sound in this thread. It's just that when it comes to religion, it becomes very personal very quickly, and I can't use my normal coping mechanisms while trying to be authentic.

And thank you to all those anti-Christian people who are civil enough to refrain from snarky comments in a thread where people are talking about very personal, very vulnerable things.

Easter blessings to you all.

I was a self-proclaimed atheist for the first 29 years of my life.

At age 29, I decided to take-up reading the Bible on a whim -- mostly because I found Christian people impossible to talk to and I wanted to learn "their language" for lack of a better expression.

What really strikes me is that the entirety of Scripture points to God's redeeming and restoration of a broken relationship, the Spiritual relationship that was intended to exist between man and Him.

The more this began sinking into my heart, the more I saw this relationship demonstrated in nature and character of Jesus. This was the relationship I had been missing for 29 years and it literally brought me to my knees in tears.

I was living-out the estrangement of the prodigal son in Luke 15.

As in Rev 3:20 -- Christ was knocking at the door of my heart.





I was emotionally dead by age 29 -- I felt like old dead tree in the middle of the desert.

God met me there in the desert, and since then he has overwhelmed my heart with a love and healing that are beyond words. As it's written in Galatians 5, the Spirit of God indwells each believer to bring forth God's own work of love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control.

I believe that God purposes to reveal his heart and character to us, if through Christ we earnestly ask Him to do so. As in Psalm 139, I need him to show me what's truly in my heart -- and if there's some kind of sin-issue getting in the way of that relationship.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!"
Psalm 139

In summary, life is not easy just because I'm a Christian who's overcoming Aspergers. I count myself as a blessed man every morning that I wake, and at the same time there are aspects of human interaction I just may never understand, it resonates in my heart for each semi-flawed relationship that I know I have. I treasure each and every one these relationships as a miraculous gift.

To be clear, the AS traits are still a brick wall for me -- I've mostly come to the conclusion that I'm better able to show my love for others through service rather than through socializing. I can wash coffee pots after church service and offer it up as an act of love and worship. I can also socialize with people I know well, so though I'm solitary in much of my behavior I can always rejoice over a good conversation or those moments where a friend needs a hand.

I am comforted by the thought that Moses, the Prophets and even Christ Himself had their own allotted seasons of solitude -- alone in the desert or wilderness and relying on God's provision in their times of greatest need. Yet their heart was to see God's relationship with His people fulfilled and restored.

Last edited by Maranatha on 05 Apr 2010, 2:14 am, edited 5 times in total.