Cannot grasp the concept of faith....could it be my AS?

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I have no problem with the existence of a God per se. I have thought similar things as you.

But organized religion is 100% pure unproven BS and there's no way you can argue otherwise.

To continue, generally speaking, when a religion talks about having faith, it is meant that a particular approach will give a desired result which may not be objectively measurable in the sense that you can prove you are experiencing this result to someone who is not taking this kind of approach, so, in a sense, submitting oneself to the approach and believing it will work is what is meant by having faith, but you can prove it to yourself. And people do demonstrate to themselves again and again that this kind of approach does work. However, if a person is required to believe in something that to himself is ridiculous, then I do not see why he would take such an approach. That would make no sense.

When the early Christians spoke of faith, they did not mean this word faith to be in a God that existed outside of themselves. This is presumably not what a Christian was thinking when he walked into the lion's den. When they talked about faith they were meaning something called transubstantiation. In those early days when Christianity was new, people had a more specific understanding of transubstantiation they do today, though any dedicated Christian probably has a general idea of the meaning of the word faith from this angle

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/transubstantiation.

Actualizing the potential for transubstantiation is actually the basic aim of all the major religions of humanity, but for these early Christians having faith meant taking a step from one dimension into another. When a person walked in faith he was literally transforming the ground when his own foot touched it. This is what is probably meant by moving mountains. Obviously believing in an idea or image in ones own mind cannot affect a substantial change in ones physical self.

One question is, does a person actually need to be a member of a religion in order to take such a step? For instance could a humanist take it? or just a person who is trying the best he can to live a good life? The answer is yes, in some ways, perhaps, but also, in some ways, maybe no.

I'll do the best I can to answer.

I was an atheist. In college one day while I was folding laundry, I had a sudden religious experience (out of the blue, I wasn't looking for it), in which a proposition was placed in my head about the nature of God, Divine Revelation and religion. It wasn't a voice. It was a complete thought. It was not a thought that I myself had thought. It was a thought that came from outside me. Hard to believe, but I know exactly what I experienced. I myself was dumbfounded when this happened. I tried to ignore this proposition, but it wouldn't go away no matter what I did. It was more solid than my other thoughts, and when I sought to disprove it, it only became a more forceful presence in my mind. I read everything I could to disprove it through reason, but I couldn't; and while this other-worldly proposition could not itself be proved, it also was not in any way contrary to reason. It took me three years of struggle to finally assent to it and its implications.

So, to answer your question why did I do it? In a way, I simply had to do it because I couldn't ignore it.

Interesting. If it floats your boat, if it feels right, then why not? There's nothing wrong with being religious, just so long as you don't try to convert people or use it as an excuse to do bad things. Personally, religion doesn't float my boat, but I'm not gonna stop you from practicing it.

A big part of aspies' lack of faith comes from the "does not compute" aspect of god's love. The Bible/Torah/Koran tells us that god loves us and wants to feel joy. Religious people in our lives, if any, tell us the same thing. But when we get ostracized by our colleagues, bullied by our classmates, harassed by some prick on the street, or get stuff thrown at us from a passing car, it's impossible not to ask: "Really, god? Really?!" If that's not lack of love from god for making that happen to us in the first place, or at least for him not preventing it (like making the prick walk into a lamppost before he reaches us), I don't know what is. God could, after all, predict their behavior, him being all-knowing and stuff. So at this point, "free will" becomes a way to tell us it's OK for others, and by extension, god, to treat us badly. Hence, "does not compute".

For starters, you might want to stop calling people stupid or dumb. They get a bit offended.

I have faith. Since a very young age I was tagging around with my mum to a church. The church was not strict and their was no dress code. It was a casually dressed and very warm place to be. So, I think it had a positive effect on me which made me not turn against it. I was also not a gifted child but slightly below average and I never really questioned the church. I believed it when they told me that men from the Bible wrote the Bible after God told them what to write. I believed the stories even after my mum told me they were to be taken as metaphors. I still tend to get into fantasy stories as though they are real.

Recently, I moved away from my mum and away from the church and into a strongly atheist environment. It's like culture shock. The move made me suffer a lot of anxiety which had nothing to do with people's beliefs but more to do with the lack of support I got at first for my autism. But I feel like I'm alone here and all I have for support is my Bible. I still speak in tongues and pray and it helps with a lot of self-confidence issues, depression and severe anxiety.

To me religion is about one's personal journey and it's got a deeper meaning than just a bunch of laws of nature. I'm still open to evolution. I'm open to everything. I'm open to freedom of choice and allow people to have or not have a religion, as long as they don't act superior to someone with a differing view. Most atheists I know fail the test so I have a lack of respect for them.

My faith has to do with the way I was raised, in a welcoming environment and a lot to do with my mental state too. But it's deeper than that. I spent a few years away from it and then the few months before I move away from my mum something compels me to return to it.

It doesn't always have to be about science and facts. I love those things but I also love to have a spiritual side. I've just felt since I was a child that I was meant to be with God, and I don't really care if I'm wrong or delusional.

I just wish people would keep an open mind. Those that don't I just turn off of and stop taking them seriously.

Interesting. You've made me completely question what I learned from 11 years in a church. In a good way. I think the Pentecostal model was seeking transubstantiation. I recall a few sermons going in that direction.

Before I would have said only a person who has given up their life for the one true God could achieve transubstantiation but now I'm thinking...why is that? Because that's what I was told all these years?

I thought moving mountains meant the all powerful creator could actually do those things. I was a child that took things very literally.

There have been so many things I was told in church about why the world is in the state it's in now so I never questioned why it was like this if there was a God, but now I just think I was only told that as an easy answer. I'm still a Christian but I have a few more things to think about.

Now I'm remembering...invite God into your heart. I really need to go back to church.

Edit: scratch that. You're talking about the catholic church. I thought you were talking about the very first Christians, in Antioch. I'm thinking that it has a spiritual meaning. I prefer the spiritual meaning.

I have a sort of faith, but I find it hard to discuss and it tends to irritate religious people and atheists alike.

I was an atheist until I was in my 20s, when I had a "Spiritual experience" --analyzing this, I found it to be principally psychological in nature, but clearly of a kind with the experiences which are described by people who belong to various religious traditions. I did some experiments in focusing my inner thoughts about these things through various religions frameworks and found that they all work.

I am now a sort of wooly agostic, I actually practice certain religious activities, but I think the form is unimportant--the trappings of religion are like the food coloring in the sugar pill that is the placebo--those details are not important. Most religious people don't want to know that, because the people who run their religion's power structure depend on some system of exclusive access to their god that allows them to claim godlike authority.

In my fairly idiosyncratic personal faith, God is not a being but the ground of being, the meta pattern from which the patterns that organize energy and spacetime flow. The universe is the "one true revelation" and all the "revealed" books that people have made about god are fiction.

There is anthropological and psychological value in the holy texts of various faiths, but people should not put stock in them as guides to anything but their cultural history and the psychological forces that have driven them down through the ages.

The ultimate insult to God, in my system of belief, is to reject observed reality in the name of faith or practice cruelty in the name of holy morality.

I think it's helpful to give disproportionate weight to hope. If you a born pessimist, like me, the possibility that applied, focused hope might increase the odds of a positive outcome (aka prayer) provides a mechanism for shifting to a slightly more positive, optimistic outlook. I don't think the odds change as a result, but one's ability to perceive positive possibilities, opportunities and events opens and that has utilitarian value. Basically, prayer can be a tool for nudging your perceptual filters in a way that enables you to notice and take advantage of positive outcomes and useful objects in your environment.

Meditation is helpful and a great deal of religious practice is actually meditation.

There can be cathartic emotional responses to ritual, but the people involved are still people and the gulf between them and you is just as strong within the confines of their practice as it would be in a random encounter in the high street. They may profess a belief that you are all unified in the faith, but they will still think you are odd, off and not quite right...

Anyway, I enjoy my extremely personal (in the sense of pretty much uniquely mine) relationship with my very attenuated and abstract god... And I agree with almost every belief of the typical atheist, which is not endearing to most religious people.

Oh, well. At this point I will say that I am attracted to Max Tegmark's neoplatonic mathematical universe and ultimate ensemble theory--but that's probably getting on to another topic, sort of.

May the peace that surpasses all understanding be with you all and may you ever "trust but verify" your observations in all things.

I generally agree. Although I'm an atheist, I also had a spiritual experience through Zen meditation in my 20's. For me, Buddhism isn't so much a universal truth, but as they say a raft that gets you across a river. A river, created by society and our conditioning that prevents us from seeing things as they are, and using our brains appropriately.

I've gone from a firm atheistic view to a more open agnostic one in the past years. I don't believe in God but I admit no one can tell. Spiritually believing in something supernatural may be better for overall mental health and functioning, but - as many stated here - my mind just doesn't work that way. It's way too concrete in thinking style for that.

When I was in Sunday school, I always though that the stories in the bible were pretty silly and unlikely, but I always believed they were metaphorical tales that God wrote to teach us about morality and spirituality. Or maybe I'm just projecting onto my 7-year-old self. Either way, I know I didn't take the tales literally, but didn't dismiss them totally, either. It wasn't until I was much older that I actually began questioning why I believed in God. Unlike most aspies, I have never had a problem with metaphorical thinking.

No, I was talking about the early Christians. Imo they had a very clear understanding of transubstantiation and how it relates to the physical body of a human being, and their whole practice was based around it. The dictionary definition I gave a link to attributed transubstantiation to the Catholic Church, but the basic concept existed before then, and in other religions, too, such as in Buddhism. The part of the definition I was speaking from was the changing of one substance into another, but the way Roman Catholics approach it through ritual fits in here, too, so I put a link to the entire dictionary definition.


It is probably not just because it is what you were told, but because it makes sense. Imo transubstantiation is a basic concept of monotheism, but what exactly is that?. Technically belief in one God is what monotheism means, but looked at from another angle, it is the integration of many into one by virtue of including all diverse factors into oneself by acting in present time out of love and compassion for ones brother. This is the juncture where God and man coincide and some kind of interchange occurs, and it is the basic teaching of Jesus Christ, to do for ones brother as if he is oneself. John 14:2

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To anyone who finds these thrilling words mundane and nonsensical, you are in this sense on a way different tape then me, though through no fault of your own, but by a different use of language maybe we can come to understand this basic concept and see there is no so much of a difference.. And you can find momotheism in other religions, too. It is just not overtly recognizable because it takes a different form, For example in Hinduism and Buddhism the figure of the guru represent a perfected human being, so one being...a Being who is one with all. This is why people bring him flowers, which presumably represent the flowering of human potential, though on a conscious level they may not exactly know it, but in their hearts they know it. Of course many people who are not qualified will put themselves up as teachers, and many people will turn the guru into a god just as they turn God into an idol because there is a human tendency to take various representations literally. This is probably the meaning of these words from Exodus 20,


The question is, can people understand the basic principle of transubstantiation and effect this seeming, but actual physically explainable, miracle within themselves for the sake of their brother and the ultimate salvation of their own selves without using the language and terminology of a particular religion? Imo, they can, but it is also unlikely they will be able to do (which I will maybe go into in detail later),and why not use the material that is already at hand? I think as good or not a better case can be made for using it than for not using it.

“It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

Your interpretation of transubstantiation is very interesting. I never heard the term apply to the individual Christian, but in a sense it's true. By grace we are transformed to be more like Christ - that's the idea anyway. It must be possible, since we have the saints examples.

I've only heard the term transubstantiation apply to the Eucharist. St. Thomas (I thought) was the one who first coined the term. Many Christian denominations don't believe in this sort of thing. Catholics, Orthodox and some Anglicans do, and even to a degree some Lutherans.

I think the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is a very difficult concept for Aspies to grasp because there is literally no observable change in the bread and wine, and we tend to be sensorial and logical.

I'm exactly the same way.

I had faith once (for about a year and a half (19-21 yr old), then after reading the bible and many of it's translations, I came to the realization that I was fooling myself.