# Dan McClellan — Autism Is Not Caused by Sin **Summary.** A point-by-point McClellan rebuttal of a preacher who claims autism, deafness, anxiety, depression, and ADHD are all "caused by sin." Using the same Hebrew Bible and New Testament the preacher cites, McClellan argues the claim is unsupported by its proof-texts and flatly contradicted by passages that credit God — not sin — with disability. (Source: [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/Autism Is Caused by Sin|Autism Is Caused by Sin]]) --- ## Key claims and arguments **1. The text never says disability comes from sin; it says the opposite.** The decisive counter-texts are John 9:1-3 (Jesus answers "neither this man nor his parents sinned" about a man born blind), Exodus 4:11 (God to Moses: "Who makes the mute and the deaf and the blind and the seeing? Is it not I?"), and Isaiah 45:7 (God "creates" calamity). The Bible repeatedly assigns disability and calamity to God's own agency, so the preacher's "stop blaming God" warning undercuts his own theology. > [!quote] > "This is an incredibly harmful bit of dogma that is not supported by anything in the real world or even anything in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament both repeatedly reject this idea." **2. Conviction is a feeling mistaken for knowledge.** McClellan's recurring epistemic move: the preacher "likes the taste" of the idea and has "done absolutely no research," confusing intuition for evidence. This is the same data-over-dogma method documented on his [[Dan McClellan]] entity page — grounding every counter-point in specific verses and Hebrew terms rather than appeals to authority or testimony. > [!quote] > "You came up with an idea that plunked the tuning fork in the loins of your dogmatism and you confused that feeling for conviction… conviction always is a feeling." **3. The proof-texts are misread philologically.** *Bara* ("create," only ever used with God as subject) appears in Isaiah 48:6-7 and Psalm 102:19 for *new* and *future* creations, so even a univocal reading contradicts the preacher's "God stopped creating after Genesis 2" claim. *Demut* ("image/likeness") means perceptual proximity and shared representative function — in the ancient Near East kings were the "image of God," and Genesis democratizes that status to all humanity — not "created medically perfect." Genesis 1:1–2:4a is a later account written to supersede the earlier trial-and-error one. This is McClellan's standard "read the text in its own categories" hermeneutic, the same move catalogued on his entity page against the Genesis gap theory and the Sodom anachronism. **4. Autism is neurodivergence, not a defect.** McClellan reframes autism as "neurodivergence which really only" has meaning relative to socially conventionalized "neurotypical" norms — not a disease that vanishes when someone is "born again." He notes he has autistic family members and treats the "cure" promise as active harm to autistic people and their parents. --- ## Theological tension > [!contradiction] Charismatic "sin = sickness" healing theology vs. critical reading > **The preacher's position (charismatic/evangelical):** disability and disorder enter through Adam's sin; humans are "born in the likeness of a man who sinned" into a "fallen and broken world," so conditions like autism are defects requiring being "born again" for "healing and freedom." This is continuous with the Bethel/NAR healing theology already tracked in this wiki — claim your healing, sickness signals a spiritual deficit. > **McClellan's position (academic/historical-critical):** the Adam-and-Eve narrative is ancient fiction, inherited moral culpability from fictional figures is incoherent, and the cited texts attribute disability to God's agency rather than human sin. The "cure" framing is the harm vector. > Both invoke the same scriptures; the disagreement is hermeneutical, not about which verses are authoritative. --- ## Analysis for this wiki A fourth [[Dan McClellan]] source and the wiki's first sustained treatment of **disability theology**. It sits at the intersection of three existing threads: [[Theodicy]] (Exodus 4:11 / John 9:3 credit God with disability, the classic theodicy pressure point seen from the text's own side), [[Religious Trauma]] (the "your child's condition is sin" message aimed at vulnerable parents), and the wiki's standing NAR/Bethel healing-theology critique (the "sin = sickness, claim your cure" logic the preacher voices). The source carries clear DEIB and harm weight: "disability is punishment for sin" theology shames disabled people and their families and sells false cures. Naming the category error — autism as neurodivergence, not defect — is harm-reduction in the same way the Sodom anachronism reading is. McClellan's "conviction is a feeling, not knowledge" line generalizes past theology into a portable test against misinformation broadly. > [!note] Tradition > Academic / critical scholarship engaging popular charismatic apologetics. Argues from philology, the history of categories, and intratextual contradiction — not a confessional position. > [!question] Open question > The wiki now has four disability-and-suffering touchpoints (this source, [[Theodicy]], and two sermon-note theodicy anchors). Is there enough to justify a standalone `concepts/disability-theology.md` page, or does it stay folded into [[Theodicy]] until a second dedicated source lands?