Autism and the God Connection

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I believe that most people with Autism do believe in god. They have their own spiritual believe in god. They just don't belong to organized religion or go to over-crowded churches. They find god in they're own way. I know some Aspies who have researched all the different religions in the world. They are not just sheeple who believe without questioning what they are told by religious leaders. Or conform to whatever religious upbringing they had. Many go through a phase when they are young of being agnostic or atheist. Especially if they have had a bad experience in a church or fitting in with the churchy people as I like to call them. Some even turn into rabid atheists, but I think it is a case they protest too much. If they did not really care about god they would not get all upset that other people do.

Well done for saying that is very good

I am a strong believer in God I go to church every Sunday that has about 400 people and I have seen things. There was one time with me I was at home one night about two years ago and I felt some presence talk to me and again I felt a presence talk to me about this Girl and how I was going to have a close friendship with her and then went it was going to end. It all came true.

I'm my own god, does that count?:-)

I felt I was going to have gas, I was wrong.

Your just imagining it your head, falling into groupthink.

~ Flagg the Grumpy MD who understands Sociology

Last edited by Flagg on 30 Aug 2007, 8:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

*shakes the hand of fellow deity*

honored to meet a fellow egotheist.

Myself I'm a convinced atheist.

I think this "documentary" is another example of the BS the American christian community is spitting out to explain exactly everything from a spiritual point of view. If someone is gifted, then they say "God gave them that gift", if a terrible accident happens to someone, it is "Because God has a plan", if someone is healed from a disease (through the help of health care) the healing happened because of "God's love, and because God gave them strength to carry through the tough time". If you have a hallucination, daydream or regular night dream with supposed spiritual symbolism, it's "A sign from God"

By hammering such messages into people, religion is spreading, and everything can be explained by it. Religion and the so called "faith" is established among people. The spreading of religion is something that has been done in all times by religious leaders and groups, but in the US of A, the 80's and 90's have been periods when I think the churches have been "advertising" extra much, which has paid off since religion is now starting to be the new cool in USA. Of course the 9/11 terror attacks has something to do with it too.
Of course religion can have a beneficial effect for people, but I think in the wider population, it just creates closed-mindedness, intolerance and lack of objective thinking.

As for the trailer I see several problems. First it seems to look at autism as a disease that could be cured if we just knew how. (Myself I'm convinced that autism is a type of personality, it cannot be "cured" without replacing the individual completely)
I also think the numbers are wrong. First off I think the number from 1990 is rather the number of people diagnosed with classical/childhood autism (Aka Kanner's Syndrome) whereas the newer numbers include other ASD's, to create a more dramatic effect. I also think that more people are diagnosed today, people who would've made it without a diagnose in another age of time. I think that in fact ASD's are on the brink of being over-diagnosed today (People on the wrong side of the spectrum get a diagnose)
Conclusion: The numbers in the "documentary" are misinterpreted to create a more dramatic effect.

I personally see no reason to believe that the prevalence of different ASD's has changed over the last, say, 5000 years of human evolution. The only things that has changed is the society's way of treating and describing the autistic personality.

Overall the trailer uses a classic kind of rhetorics where you start out in a position where everything is dark, and all of a sudden you see a light a t the end of the tunnel. That light in this case of course was the "faith in God", that "He has a plan".

To me that trailer, and most likely all of the "documentary" is so flawed, biased and subjective that I won't give a damn about anything said in it. If this documentary is a document of anything, it's probably a document about the state of religious community today, and as such I might be interested in it, not for its view on autism.

Yes, this post is pretty harsh, I almost expect a flame war from what I call religious freaks.

If I imagined it why did the other 16.000 people feel it then?

Group insanity.

The human mind will hallucinate anything if it's poked the right way.

And as the size of the group goes up the IQ of the whole falls and becomes more prone to emotional outbursts and delusions.

~ Flagg the Grumpy MD who understands how large groups of people tick

Last edited by Flagg on 31 Aug 2007, 2:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

so you don't think we're the 'chosen' people then? '

No, that would be arrogant and elitist.

We exist because of some genetic f**k-up, a Thymine where it shouldn't be.

~ Flagg the Grumpy MD who isn't an elitist ass

Religion as "group insanity"?

Here are some questions from the Aspie-quiz evaluation:

http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/#762 (Do you believe in God?) - more Aspies than NTs do, but the difference is very small (N=3088)

http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/#104 (Do you believe in ghosts and / or supernatural phenomens?) - A small but highly significant difference. More Aspies than NTs answer high on this question (N=4441)

The question about sensitivity to electromagnetic fields is also related to these questions, as are other sensory-issues.

So, if religion is insanity, then it naturally follows that more Aspies than NTs are insane

You can believe that but I challenge to 1 have an Open Mind 2 I also challenge go to one these meeting and then you will know it's not group insanity if it's group insanity it would be a few people this was 16.000 people a bit different and its all over the world and like I mention already in a post I felt something talk to me and yes it all came true.

Also I heard an audio of a group of musicians playing music to God and as they were playing they felt something but on the audio there is a noise the noise drowned out the music but everyone said that they didn't hear that noise at all but when the noise came up the messy performance of that group became instantly tidy and polished and they played well.

Also Bono from U2 believes in God and prays before coming up on stage and reads his bible everyday and people have mentioned who doesn't know that Bono actually believes has mentioned that there is a God like presence around him. That was from a reviewer not a fan.

So, you would believe that differences in some 700 different questions in Aspie-quiz could be because of a single "f**k-up in an amino-acid? I find such statements to be more ridiculous than religious beliefs, and I too am an atheist / private belief person.

No, religion can lead to mass delusion.

Luckily most modern religions rely on Allognosticism.

Allognosticism consists of the belief that direct human experience of the divine is possible only for other people, such as the Pope, Old Testament Prophets, popular televangelists or dead relatives.

~ Flagg the Grumpy MD who has a better grasp of the philosophy of theology then you.

Go play Conway's Game Of Life and you'll understand. A single disjunction or frame shift can completely screw up a complex object. Like a human being.

~ Flagg the Grumpy MD who likes to read about genetics

Well, while I don't have much good to say about ordinary religions, I have several traits that go into the "paranormal" domain. I'm also sensite to water-currents, and I recently had an visit from a person that died at another location. Turned out that the time of death fitted perfectly with my experience of this person saying farewell.