Binary religious thinking

[vorlon13]

There are 2 kinds of religious people;

the ones that see the world as either/or, true/false, good/evil,


and the ones who don't

[Edwardo Piet]

Hahahhaha....ha!

Well it was fun setting up jokes for others and myself with that tongue in cheek "I'm a citizen of the world" wishy-washy malarkey ballsy ballsy ballsy balls bollocks.

(3 "ballsy"s intended (no I don't have 3 testicles)).

[I_am_not_mafia]

Aspies most certainly do have empathy, they're not sociopathic. Its that we often have difficulty expressing empathy in socially conventional means.

My apologies if it sounded like I was describing people with Aspergers as being sociopathic. That was not my intention.

[Edwardo Piet]

@ IANM

To be fair that was partially my fault. You actually said sociopaths lack empathy whereas Aspies struggle to see things from the point of view of another. And I always thought that was what empathy was all about so I conflated the two (but also said that I thought there was more to Aspergers than that).

So although I wasn't interpreting what you said unfairly IANM, I made you come across as more blunt or insensitive than you actually were- so I apologize for that. That was my fault.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yeah it is quite a complex syndrome and affects different people in different ways. I heard that the term Aspergers is falling out of favour and being replaced with being Autistic Spectrum Disorders.

I think that that may be a good thing. I get confused knowing even whether I'm an Apsy or not despite many others including professionals thinking I may be. I think Aspergers is not very clearly defined. Breaking it up into several different versions of ASD (mostly high functioning in this case I think?) may be a good move.

My dad and my uncle both have undiagnosed Aspergers. They struggle with executive function in that they can only concentrate on one thing at a time. It means that my dad never comes to the dinner table when he's called and my uncle struggles with the game of Go. I beat him at chess my making moves unrelated to what he is focused on and then waiting for him to forget about them again.

I'm exactly the same with Chess and a neuropsychologist, a psychiatrist and a teaching assistant who worked with autistic children all thought I may be an Aspy. Apparently I have to travel accross the country to get it tested and I am not able to any time soon. It seems too difficult to get autistim tested. I have a friend who also struggles with getting people to actually test her.

Personally speaking I have my own mental deficiency in that I am unable to experience an orgasm. I am too sensitive to sensory stimuli. Tactile defensiveness is also another symptom common with people on the Autistic spectrum disorder but not everybody has it.

Although at least in my experience orgasms are mostly a postive thing and I'm sorry to hear you don't experience them... they're not 100% good I mean they can be addictive and obsessive like many other things. They can lead to misery as well as happiness, of course. I'm sure you're aware of this though...

If you don't mind me asking then: How do you feel about not being able to experience orgasms? I know you don't know exactly what you're missing if you've never experienced one... but I hope you don't feel too bad about it?

I mean since you brought it up I was curious but of course if it makes you feel uncomfortable or I have offended you then of course I am sorry for asking. I am not intending to ask over-personal questions.

<Hangs tongue out and jumps up and down a lot>

You've been drinking too much Gatorade missy!

[I_am_not_mafia]

No problem Evie. I'll forgive you if you pat me on the head again and call me a good dog.

[Edwardo Piet]

Haha anytime

[I_am_not_mafia]

I'm sure you're aware of this... if you don't mind me asking then: How do you feel about not being able to experience orgasms? I know you don't know exactly what you're missing if you've never experienced one... but I hope you don't feel too bad about it?

I mean since you brought it up I was curious but of course if it makes you feel uncomfortable or I have offended you then of course I am sorry for asking. I am intended to ask over-personal questions.

As you say, I've never experienced one so don't know what I am missing. And because it's not really a part of my life I don't feel that it's anything personal or am in anyway uncomfortable to bring it up in conversation. Seeing other people have them looks really odd though.

I think I had the beginnings of one once and it was so surprising that it woke me up but I have nothing to compare it against so can't really say.

I don't really get driven by any form of hunger and consequently also do not experience much reward from whatever I do. There have been two times that I can remember where I experienced a high as such. Both times came when I was paragliding and something went seriously wrong and I recovered. I remember once being on a morphine drip in hospital and not noticing any effect from it. Caffeine sends me round the bend though.

[Edwardo Piet]

So you neither experience the benefits nor the drawbacks

[Angrboda]

This is something I've mentioned sporadically, but I think it's worth its own topic.

I've noticed a tendency for some religious theists to have a very binary, black and white approach to various aspects of life and the universe. I'm not accusing every theist of this, and not every person who is guilty of one of them is guilty of all. But there are several extremely common oversimplifications that get made, which I encourage people to think about. I think this happens partly because religion benefits from encouraging people to think this way, and that things appear simpler to deal with when neatly put into two distinct categories. Often, I hear the argument from discomfort; if it isn't this simple and binary, I don't like the consequences of that. That's not a defence, it's an admission that your emotions are running the show in that instance. Things are rarely black and white, we live almost constantly in the grey area, whether people want to admit it or not.

The two process model states that we use distinctly different ways of processing opinions that agree with our pre-existing beliefs than we do with opinions that differ with our beliefs. Thus, if I'm reading an opinion that is in accord with my beliefs, I will use a 'quick' evaluation of the material, usually substituting a simplified version of the point of view I'm reading. If I'm reading something that goes contrary to my beliefs, I may slow down and apply reason and critical thinking to the material in an effort to debunk the positive opinion. In this way, our own opinions will tend to become represented by simplistic models of the subject matter, whereas our criticisms of our opponents will become elaborate and in-depth.

Thus it makes perfect sense that when a theist is representing their own opinion, you may find a simpler, binary representation of it, than if they are presenting their view of the atheist opinion. Since both sides engage in this split-level thinking, it can easily lead to extreme polarization in arguments. Thus we have positions such as, "either my god is true or none are," instead of a more balanced view, or we have "there is no evidence for God," instead of the fairer "there is weak evidence for God."