Autism and Piety?

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I was wondering how autism affected other people's experience of religion, because I felt like it STRONGLY impacted mine?

Like, my special interest is religion. I am OBSESSED, and I am most familiar with Christianity, then Judaism and Islam, then Paganism, then Buddhism, and I know very little of Hinduism and other religions. I was very lucky that my brain latched onto religion, b/c I feel like I was given free reign to pursue it as much as I want, whereas if I had latched onto, like horses or trains, I would've been discouraged. A kid who won't stop talking about trains (or whatever) is generally considered a little weird, but a kid who won't stop talking about God is pious and people generally encouraged or tolerated it, and I was allowed to read the Bible in class and write all of my essays about how religion intersected with whatever we were learning, etc.

And I thought I was possessed as a kid, or else somehow especially touched by the supernatural. I didn't know what stimming was, I just knew when I got upset I would lose control of my body and start screaming and hitting myself and I wouldn't be able to stop, so I thought I had a demon in me. I was very worried about it, especially since I have chorea caused by focal seizures, and epileptics are possessed in the Bible. Also, praying releases endorphins for me- though whether its the prayer itself or the physical motions that accompany it, I couldn't say I interpreted that as the Holy Spirit, and thought the rush I got from stimming was God speaking to me through out the day.

I believed that up until I was 19, when I had a crisis of faith. I'm 22 now, and basically out the other side of that, but I have found ConSIDRABLY more chill regarding this stuff. But I was wondering if anyone had similar/different experiences?

I'm not obsessed with Religion like that but I do find it incredibly important. It goes with my belief of people should always try to get close to the divine in all ways possible. Whenever people try to attack it I do defend it to the death though. And I do have some OCD stuff with it but it wasn't my special interest like you. That's a cool special interest though.

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
- Thomas Aquinas

I think when I was about 12 or 13 I started questioning everything I was taught and I obsessively researched what it is to not believe in god, the justifications atheists have, the arguments used to debunk religion.. I studied them all, believed them all, and had a good memory of all I learned. By time I was 14/15 I was that annoying militant online atheist everyone wanted to add to their block list.

Like every interest, it faded and got taken over by another one, although religion does still genuinely interest me, it was always mostly the lackthereof side of it that did.

No, I think people that only talk about God come off as religious freaks.

Well, I am ASD and an outspoken atheist.

Hyper-religiosity is more associated, actually, with temporal lobe epilepsy. As long as you're not having the kind of seizures that put you in the hospital, it's nothing to be concerned about, but if you're having frequent seizures during the day, I don't recommend driving very often. I only have them at night, and they're fun because I like to imagine I'm going downhill on a bobsled. Whee!

However, being an outspoken atheist is a possible symptom of hyper-religiosity, ironically.

+ 1

As a kid, I was never much into church or CCD (my family is Catholic). As I grew up, religion just didn't make sense to me anymore. I've been an atheist since.

Haha, that's probably fair- I definitely had a reputation as a "Jesus Freak", especially when I was younger. But maybe it's just cause I grew up in the Bible Belt, but the number of adults/pastors/priests who let me talk about religion endlessly or would have real conversations with me about it was A LOT. Like my mom discouraged my sister from studying art, but let me read the Bible for hours or bike around to different churches on Sunday, you know? Or my friend Peter, who is also autistic, got shut down A LOT when he tried to talk to people about animation, or else would only get "Uh-huhs" in response to his statements, but I only ever got shut down like once or twice and people would generally engage with me. IDK, I just feel like I was lucky my brain latched onto it, because it really is one of the few fields where a motivated teen can acquire enough knowledge to pick a fight with someone with a grad degree and they'll be on par and the grad has to respect their opinion as equally valid! Religion to me is where politics, philosophy, and cultural anthropology intersect, and because it isn't bound to earth (if you know what I mean) you can go forever thinking about it I feel like being autistic helped me to learn a lot about it, and gave me a perspective on it that is different from most NT theologians or worshipers, but I haven't seen much about how other autistic people experience religion!

As someone who niggles at the detail over long longggg periods, my experience of religion was always affected by my AS. At some point, it came down to this: I believed one thing, yet my actions contradict the dogma of that belief. My inner integrity was forked and needed to be reconciled.

The most contrasting example is pre-marital sex. Christianity forbids it, yet I not only pursued it, I also believed that sexual experiences is a benefit. There are other areas where my actions conflict with Christian dogma. For the longest while, I accepted this as part of the human "fallen" nature. But as I examined this further, I knew I was just accepting the dogma rather than seeing it for what it was - a true contradiction that undermines my inner integrity.

So, in answer to the above question, my AS had me analyze my acceptance of religious dogma, with my integrity being a particular focal point. My deliberate actions conflicted with my beliefs. My beliefs later changed, but not directly to deal with the conflict. The unexpected benefit was that now my beliefs coexist happily with my actions and choices. That part of my integrity is now at an optimum.

You make a good point. To the non-religious you'd probably come across as a religious freak. But within a community of fellow religious believers you'd probably come across as devoted.