Polytheism,

I'll be honest and I hope I don't offend anyone with this statement but I find religion full stop strange. Absolutely each to their own and I respect what other people believe. But I don't understand it. I don't find polytheism any stranger than montheism. I just do not believe that any gods actually exist and I find worshipping an invisible being an odd concept. I think this is part of my autism. I'm very black and white and very logical and I need there to be some sort of evidence for what I believe. And I don't see any evidence for god's existing, if there was, surely we'd only have one religion.

Lack of evidence for the existence of God is one of the key sticking points for people who do not believe in a divine being or beings. Many people of faith would argue that they choose to have faith that God exists and some might say they have had personal religious experiences of some sort. 

Some people who believe in God consider worship to be divinely inspired, yet ways of worshiping God to be human manufactured and influenced by geographical area, history, culture and so on. This idea means that it doesn’t matter whether you are Jewish, Christian, Hindu or whatever. Expressions of faith in these religions are limited by our human condition yet the essence of one God is there in each religion and can be discerned through expressions of love, charity, faithfulness, truthfulness and so on. 

It is intriguing that you think your autism might be playing a part in how you consider religious worship. Now that would make for an interesting study—autistic people and religious experience (or lack of).

Did I say that I link my spiritual experiences with being autistic, because I just read back through my posts on this thread and can't find anywhere where I've connected the two? Although I'm not ruling out a link between the two, I'm not sure there is one, do you think everyone who has deep spiritual experiences is autistic? That would sort of imply that people in the past were more autistic than they are today or that all autistic people are mor spiritual, which from reading this thread, they're clearly not.

As I've said before I'm not big on worship in the traditional sense and I dislike ritual and the performance aspect of it, I prefer something more personal, but then maybe that's an autistic thing, not wanting to do groups?

TheCatWoman said:

Eeewww, decaf, the very idea should be expunged from humanity!

I agree! I really enjoy strong, black coffee.

I have a manual espresso machine that makes excellent full flavoured, strong espressos, so long as I buy my preferred coffee blend. I have perfected the art of tamping the coffee grounds with just a hint of pressure to produce coffee with a smooth, light golden crema. 

TheCatWoman said:

Eeewww, decaf, the very idea should be expunged from humanity!

I agree! I really enjoy strong, black coffee.

I have a manual espresso machine that makes excellent full flavoured, strong espressos, so long as I buy my preferred coffee blend. I have perfected the art of tamping the coffee grounds with just a hint of pressure to produce coffee with a smooth, light golden crema.