*Religion was Never Invented by NTs!*

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I suggest that most/all religions were invented by people who couldn't stop asking questions, for people who not only thirsted for understanding, but who needed support structures ( mental and social ) for handling longterm projects, participating in society, coping with the predictably uncontrollable in life, etc.

The sort of questions that most religion devotes itself to answering/exploring are the kind AS ask, not most NTs. Most NTs don't seem to feel the same unceasing urge to understand that AS do. Most of them simply do what they are told.

Some NTs may have exploited/taken advantage of religious structures and concepts over the centuries, but the creators of religion, the people who most needed religious ideas/practices/explanations, were AS/neurountypical.

The currently prevailing attitude that science alone will eventually be able to answer all questions is naive, and destructive, most of all in that it makes vast reserves of religious/spiritual wisdom/understanding, ( that it has taken thousands of years to acquire ) , seem useless/irrelevant/unimportant.

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Last edited by ouinon on 11 Oct 2008, 4:31 am, edited 3 times in total.

I think that religious invention would have spread in the classic way that new, creative, original ideas spread from fringe/alternative groups in society to others/NTs, who are impressed by the group cohesion associated with this new "thing", ( eg: gay clothing styles/music/art/nightclubs become the coolest thing ), without understanding what function the practices/concepts served for the original group.
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The example of Galileo: "Father of Modern Science";

For instance Galileo's hotly, and persistently, argued theory that tides were caused by the sun, and his notion that the swing of a pendulum would always take the same time, irrespective of amplitude.


"Rational and just" because when they refused to accept his theory about heliocentrism Galileo had in fact not yet proven it. His argument had holes in it, and if his theories about tides and pendulums were anything to go by there was no reason to have blind faith in his conclusions.

"The Church kept closer to reason than Galileo". In fact it was Galileo's imaginative, intuitive leaps, ( which Einstein has acknowledged as such), that the Church was not prepared to believe in without proof, but which changes in the balance of power soon after, new political interests, found useful to invest in, cry to the people about, in a campaign to discredit the church. Separate it from scientific endeavour, of which it had till then been the foremost supporter/sponsor.

So, who do we know who would have insisted on having full proof of such a theory before accepting it as true? ( clue..; the intials AS)

Ironically it was the Church's insistence on such proof which resulted in it losing its role as the leader of scientific research/development... ... ... ...

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Despite your enthusiasm for religion, if I am AS (and I am not sure) I have been discussing religion with people since the age of about 4 or 5 and found nothing worthwhile in it at all. No doubt I am interested in basic philosophical questions but the idiotic fantasies in religion have never had any appeal.

To attribute all religion to Aspies would be a mistake, I think. Besides, how could you ever substantiate that? I am not impressed by these random claims.

Why?

Agree, can not.

But many things, not only the textual evidence ( lists, lists, and more lists, black and white thinking, repeated doubt and gloom and criticism of society, , detailed rules, etc ) of the Bible for example, but also the many rituals of religious practice, the religious concept of faith, ( "the stopping questioning" necessary to advance with certain kinds of projects), which is such a useful tool for AS, ( but pretty much irrelevant to NTs who do it naturally), the rules of social engagement/interaction often encoded in religion, the special diets, the constant search for answers to the "big" questions in life, ( which NTs almost never ask) , etc, etc, point to a significant AS input, and in light of the preponderant NT tendency to take everything on trust, to not ask questions, to not doubt, to be satisfied with other people's explanations, it seems likely that AS in fact created most of what is known as religion, which arises from doubt and big questions.

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So are Aspies just going to cherry-pick whatever we want from the world and claim it as our own? All the good stuff, an Aspie did it!. The rest of it- those damn NTs!

I don't think that many on WP, ( in PPR anyway), would agree with you about religion being "good stuff".

I wanted to challenge that attitude, ( and argue that religion contains much that is of value ) , by pointing out that probably much of it is valuable, to us in particular, because it was painstakingly worked out/conceived of by AS in the past precisely in order to deal with AS-type difficulties in life.

There are just too many parts of religious teaching which relate to classic AS issues, chief among them that of lack of faith, and the quest for the "why" of everything.

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Last edited by ouinon on 11 Oct 2008, 6:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ridiculous. You're projecting your personal desires onto everything, here. You want AS to be the super-saviour of the planet. You want NTS to be the lesser race. I'm disgusted.

I come fom a long line of NTs .

In what way? I don't follow.


Not at all. I think that NTs are gifted with ( natural) faith in huge quantities, among many other ( "good" ) things, without which civilisation would not survive very long.

I am surprised that you think that my suggesting an AS responsibility for most of religion is a sign of my seeing us as "super-saviours", when in fact I think it is precisely our particular difficulties, in combination with our detachment/objectivity, which led us to create ( highly complex and original ) support structures ( for our "heady" intelligence) like religion.

We may have created something which for centuries/thousands of years saved us, but is largely irrelevant to NTs, except as social/community ritual, ( or as power-tool to be exploited, something which its AS creators probably did not anticipate) .

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How do you know what is "largely irrelevant" to NTs?

I'm fairly certain that religion was a joint-venture between Aspies and NTs. Why you're so preoccupied with labelling people I'll never know. Try to see people without the labels.

From my necessarily limited experience of NTs am nevertheless fairly sure that the large majority do not usually, or persistently, ask "why" about life, do not need to understand, ( or at least have a profound explanation for ), anything they do before doing it, etc.


What makes you so certain?


As I said, I thought that the attitude expressed so frequently on here, that religion is "something for the NTs", when so many elements of religion are clearly the result of AS style issues/questionings, needed questioning.

The belief that religion is nothing but lies, delusions, empty rubbish, to which "one is personally far superior", is a perfect example of the kind of thinking which created the wars of religion. Ignorance and prejudice. And it is not NTs guilty of this.

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"Neuro-Typical" is a ridiculously wide variety of people. I literally can't believe you do not realize this. The world is not just Aspies and NTs, ouinon. That's an unjust simplification. It's like referring to animals using only the labels

"Dangerous" and "Not Dangerous"

"Cute" and "Not Cute"

I know that.

My argument refers to the AS qualities I see in religion, ( especially western) and how significant they seem to be.

PS. Would the expression Non-AS would be more accurate when referring to the non-AS? ! I just thought that as I was discusssing this on WP about AS influence on religion it would be perfectly appropriate and accepted usage to refer to NTs!
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How to know what is Aspie influence and what isn't? Asking questions and pondering deep thoughts, that's something ALL human beings do. Is this worth thinking about? Does it matter who invented religion?

And if you could somehow bring some substance to your argument, so what? What are really trying to say?

It is? I don't think so, ( I have proof of this in the father of my son, who is not at all an isolated case). It's one of the things which distinguishes AS, ( or close "relations"/"near to the spectrum" people), from "NTs" in one situation/circumstance after another. It's one of the things which makes life so complicated for so many AS; this drive to find out/work out the whys and hows of everything around them.


I believe that thinking about what role AS might have had in creating religion may help to show what value it could have for AS now, that exploring what kind of human concerns/difficulties it was invented to alleviate/solve could be useful in changing dismissive attitudes towards it.

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