Joined: 11 Nov 2011 Gender: Female Posts: 82,353 Location: UK
14 Apr 2025, 10:47 am
DuckHairback wrote:
I think human brains just can't fully realise chaos. I mean we have an abstract concept of what chaos would be but we can't really model it in our brains.
A bit like the way that computers can't really generate random numbers. The hardware isn't capable of it.
So I think we tend to project intelligence onto events that are chaotic. It's a way of soothing a brain that's having a panic attack because the information is getting isn't making sense.
I genuinely think if you isolated a group of babies and let them grow up on an island somewhere, it wouldn't be long before the resulting population came up with some kind of spiritual framework for understanding the world around them. They'd invent their own God.
Joined: 26 May 2024 Age: 52 Gender: Female Posts: 49 Location: UK
28 Apr 2025, 8:48 am
At church I have felt the prescence of the Holy Ghost-the Holy Ghost the breath and wind of God's third attritube. I am very sensory tested at level 2 and sometimes go above this.
An article has stated that people with autism can have increased somasensory perceptions and it could explain why may be perhaps some autistics may be have enriched spiritual experiences.
Research by Ingela Visuri in 2018 found that autistics have increased somasensory perceptions which lead to increased supernatural experiences. See below for basically in a nutshell was they argued- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2153599X.2018.1548374
“non-autistic group participants, and current research suggests that unusual somatosensory experiences are prevalent in the autistic population.”
More research later in Autism and Religion in 2023 found the below- “We dispute the assumption that individuals with ASD are inherently less religious and spiritual than the neurotypical population. Religiosity is possibly expressed differently in ASD with unique spiritual experiences and beliefs (“gifted, visionary, and truth-seeker”). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10453845/
Joined: 14 Jan 2024 Gender: Female Posts: 439 Location: New England
28 Apr 2025, 11:01 am
I've always wondered why I couldn't feel anything in church despite my very best efforts. It's not that I can't experience music very intensely, for example, and I know that music is used by megachurches in particular to manipulate people. But the music used in those churches doesn't do anything for me. It's just fake to me.
I wonder if I had attended a Catholic church that sung Renaissance polyphonic choral music like Palestrina if that might have had a different effect on me. I discovered that music independently and love it and can see how it might evoke spiritual feelings to people, it's very powerful music.
Old Catholic cathedrals are also marvels of architecture that are extremely visually appealing to me, a stark contrast with the boring megachurch auditorium.
All of this makes me wonder if I had been born into a Catholic family if I might have come out still religious. Personally, I'm glad that didn't happen. I can appreciate old Catholic music and cathedrals from my position outside, away from the toxic beliefs.
_________________ Diagnosed with ADHD, Strongly Suspecting I'm also Autistic
Joined: 26 May 2024 Age: 52 Gender: Female Posts: 49 Location: UK
28 Apr 2025, 12:58 pm
Hi Harmonie Have you been baptised and received the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Was you sensory sensitive growing up, hypersensitive or hyposensitive. Being so I think could perhaps increase spiritual perceptive awareness. There are many gifts of the Holy Spirit and if you have been baptised and received the gifts of the Holy Spirit perhaps you may be better attuned to something not so dependent on a spiritual presence like the gift of knowledge or wisdom. I have read also that some people with ADHD can have a different experience of hypersensitivity than some autistics.
Harmonie wrote:
I've always wondered why I couldn't feel anything in church despite my very best efforts. It's not that I can't experience music very intensely, for example, and I know that music is used by megachurches in particular to manipulate people. But the music used in those churches doesn't do anything for me. It's just fake to me.
I wonder if I had attended a Catholic church that sung Renaissance polyphonic choral music like Palestrina if that might have had a different effect on me. I discovered that music independently and love it and can see how it might evoke spiritual feelings to people, it's very powerful music.
Old Catholic cathedrals are also marvels of architecture that are extremely visually appealing to me, a stark contrast with the boring megachurch auditorium.
All of this makes me wonder if I had been born into a Catholic family if I might have come out still religious. Personally, I'm glad that didn't happen. I can appreciate old Catholic music and cathedrals from my position outside, away from the toxic beliefs.
Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Age: 72 Gender: Male Posts: 13,343
28 Apr 2025, 5:26 pm
Harmonie wrote:
I've always wondered why I couldn't feel anything in church despite my very best efforts. It's not that I can't experience music very intensely, for example, and I know that music is used by megachurches in particular to manipulate people. But the music used in those churches doesn't do anything for me. It's just fake to me.
I wonder if I had attended a Catholic church that sung Renaissance polyphonic choral music like Palestrina if that might have had a different effect on me. I discovered that music independently and love it and can see how it might evoke spiritual feelings to people, it's very powerful music.
Old Catholic cathedrals are also marvels of architecture that are extremely visually appealing to me, a stark contrast with the boring megachurch auditorium.
All of this makes me wonder if I had been born into a Catholic family if I might have come out still religious. Personally, I'm glad that didn't happen. I can appreciate old Catholic music and cathedrals from my position outside, away from the toxic beliefs.
Interesting. I can relate to your being unable to "feel anything" (I guess you mean anything spiritual?) in church when they play music. But then I'm not a believer (while I presume you are?), which would explain it in my case but not in yours. I absolutely love good religious music, and the sheer beauty of it, plus a feeling of "if only it was true" often makes me very tearful. There are some religious songs that I play just because they're so good, but I daren't perform some of them in front of an audience because I can't sing properly when I'm crying. I got similarly weepy when I saw the film Cold Mountain, which had a scene in which there was a lot of evil being done and one of the victims said "This can't go on, God won't allow it." The root of that feeling seems to be an intense sense of sorrow that we don't have somebody up there watching our backs.
But why a believer would be emotionally open to music but not "spiritually" open, that's mysterious to me. As I say, in my case it's not surprising at all because being secular and therefore feeling that there is no soul, the only meaning I can assign to the word "spiritual" is that it's a synonym for "emotional," but for a believer the meanings of the two words must be different.
My emotional openness to music, even religious music, strongly suggests to me that this notion in scripture that atheists are so because they've hardened their hearts against God is wrong. I think it's a shame that atheists and believers don't understand each other, and that it's a particular shame that so many of them, theists and non-theists, insist they do when they don't. I think I understand believers partly but not completely.
I gather I was baptised as a baby, but it would have been just a sprinkling of holy water, not total immersion or anything so intense. Never noticed any gifts of the holy spirit. I don't remember the event, but I guess I wouldn't be secular if I'd had such gifts.
12 Apr 2025, 3:37 am
