Aspies For Freedom

I'll bet Parsley is starting to look a bit green...

Ugh... Poor Austin. Hope he gets out of there and learns what Christianity really means... not this "bribe you with 1337 healing powerz!!!1!!" crap.

I'm not a christian, but I know that prayer healing is at least somewhat effective, because scientific studies have shown that it has an almost "placebo effect"-like effect on the patient (sometimes, but not always).  In short, it doesn't heal on it's own, but it makes the patient feel better and feel like they are getting healthier, which helps them fight off whatever is affecting their health, so it results in improvement.

And you're right, both of the people involved in this piece are wrong in a variety of ways.  Neither one is right about prayer healing, and neither one is right about the way they are approaching the issue of autism.

All the things we call diseases and disabillities are proof that when God lets Satan run the world instead of simply annihilating him forthright, Satan can't run the world.

No, of course not.  They're (usually) separate realms.  But science can conclusively say whether or not someone gets better when people pray over them.  Some things we cannot see or measure.  Health is not one of those things.

(now if it were something like, faith helping people come to grips with dying and therefore dying peacefully, that's not something that would be easy to measure scientifically; and of course, we cannot prove or disprove any of the tenets of religion like wether or not god exists, heaven is real, etc.  But we can prove or disprove people's claims of being able to affect this world, such as psychics, faith healers, etc)

Yeah, exactly--one time when Jesus healed a blind guy, his disciples asked him whether he or his parents had sinned, and Jesus answered, "Neither".

Disease, disability is no person's fault.  Satan can't run a perfect world.  
God just wants to prove to the angels, rather than just zap Satan and create an atmosphere of fear, that Satan is inadequate to run things, not just arrogant.

Autistics are disabled.  It's a simple fact of being autistic in an NT world.  The thing is, people don't properly understand what disabled means in the social model (go to Wikipedia and look up "Social Model of Disability") and they don't understand that it's OK to be disabled.  I think most people think that if they are disabled by autism, they cannot be proud of their autism or themselves- that it invalidates their right to acceptance.  This is not true, and it's sad that it's such a widespread thought.  I am autistic, I am disabled, and I am not ashamed to say so.  I wish other people could see it that way, too.

Autism's part of your personality. Like many mental disabilities, it connects quite seamlessly with who you are and how you think; and that means your personality is shaped by it. I think, if the world were perfect, you'd still be autistic, but it wouldn't hold you back any; it wouldn't be a disability... if you were bipolar, you'd have the creativity but not the depression and psychosis... It would take a supernatural effort to separate the personality from the drawbacks; but then, we're talking about exactly that. Think... amazingly keen senses, noticing everything, without ever being overloaded... I'd love that.

I'm being a **** Arctoris, it's what I do, it's who I am.

I guess not everyone has learned yet to do what I do when I encounter a post like the above- roll my eyes, giggle, and forget about it.

Some people are far too prudish for me.

I think it makes me a better christian, personally. I don't take anybody's word for anything; I have to make sure everything I believe makes sense. That makes me rather resistant to a lot of beliefs that don't actually jive with what's really written in the bible.

Crack a smile mate.

You'll live longer.

*motivator blows ala the R5 unit in a starwars*

So deep alectrum, give...give YOURSELF a round of applause lol