Religion and Aspergers?

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When I first told my close friend who lives in Tigard about my Aspergers, she had just come back from church. I'm not a religious person, but my close friend was deep into religion. Every five minutes she would mention something that happened at church. But right before I told her about Aspergers, she said "While we were in our moment of silence, I heard a voice in my head say 'Aspergers'. I don't know what it is, but I think it's a part of my life somehow."

I don't know if it's true or not, but it's something I've been pondering for about a year now.

Any thoughts?

I'm not a fan of organized religion, mainly because you have to conform to a certain set of beliefs. I'm definitely more of a spiritual person. In fact, I bet a lot of Aspies are against organized religion because of the fact that we are nonconformists.

My mom is an atheist. My dad is an atheist. I, too, am an atheist. I haven't ever been to a church in my life. We save a lot of money.

I don't know how I feel about these things right now...

...but you did say that she mentioned Aspergers right BEFORE you told her (as opposed to right after...which would be suspicious.) Very interesting!

I recently tried Christianity again partly because of my mom nagging me for not going. So I tried an Episcopal Denomination. I did think the people were quite friendly and welcoming there but the actual service is mostly just lots and lots of recital of phrases or singing.

I just didn't get it. I don't really follow ideas like worship or prayer that well.

I do kind of enjoy actual teachings though. Like if someone is discussing a lesson Jesus was trying to teach, or sermons telling more contemporary stories, but those are usually a small part of the service.

Oh, so it did happen before? Now that is interesting.

Yeah. She's so chatty though, it took about five minutes for an empty pause. I just blurted it out; "I have Aspergers".

But conforming to a certain set of beliefs isn't required for organized religion. Sharing beliefs is, but not having identical ones. Organized religion is about the similarities in beliefs, not the differences, but doesn't require it to be identical.

On the other hand there is a lot of organized religion that does "require" that, but its not a necessity just from organized religion.

That reminds me. Without throwing this thread off topic, could someone enlighten me as to what churches actually make collections mandatory? At my church (or any churches in the SSPX for that matter), the only people who give more than a buck at collections are old people who actually have money to throw away. Most of the time, my dad doesn't have anything to give, and nobody cares. But a lot of people tell me how they have to give so much cash to their church. I've never seen this. I heard LDS makes it mandatory (please correct me), but that's it.

Of course, there's no way to prove this, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that something like this could be explained by a memory recollection error. Is that actually what really happened, or is it how you remember it to have happened? A connection might not have been made at the time, but afterwards, it could have formed.

I'm just point out that nobody ever says "I know what's going to happen tomorrow." It's always the day after where people say "I foresaw this yesterday."

Last edited by SammichEater on 06 Aug 2011, 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I don't really share many of my beliefs with other religions. I'm pretty much a nonconformist.

Or... maybe she had read about Asperger's or overheard someone saying the word before and it just popped in her head randomly during the moment of silence? Or... maybe she already suspected you had Asperger's and was trying to drop a hint?

Then what would the point of this thread be? I remember it as if it happened yesterday.

I'm not sure. I don't believe you specified. You asked for thoughts on the subject, and that's what I was thinking. It seems to be the most reasonable explanation to any sort of "sixth sense."

Actually, after doing a quick Google search, it appears to be a well known logical fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

I don't believe in any god or any religion, instead of accepting an archaic definition of existence, i just appreciate nature, and take the most out of my existence.

My interest in others plummets when finding out they ascribe to an organized religion or to supernatural concepts, with 'supporting evidence' being supposed intangible experiences generated by their own minds in order to justify their ridiculous beliefs in an age of the ever-increasing prevalence of science. And some of those same people would try to convince me that I'm the one with the broken brain.

Of course, my interest in others wasn't that high to begin with, so this isn't much of a loss to me.