Religion
Related: About this forumAre People With Autism More Likely to Be Atheists?
Posted: 06/01/2012 12:05 pm
Matthew Hutson
In most religions and arguably anything worth being called a religion, God is not just an impersonal force or creator. He has a mind that humans can relate to. Maybe you're not gossiping on the phone with him late at night, but he has personality traits, thoughts, moods, and ways of communicating with you. If you didn't know what a mind was or how it worked, not only would you not understand people, but you would not understand God, and you would not be religious.
That's the theory, anyway. Scientists who study religion have come to agree that belief in God (or gods) relies on everyday social cognition: our ability, and propensity, to think about the minds of others (see chapters 6 and 7 of my book, The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking). This means that if you are autistic and unable to "mentalize," you would be an atheist. New research published this week in PLoS ONE provides fresh evidence for this claim.
But first, the existing evidence.
Jesse Bering, in a 2002 paper, noted that in autobiographical accounts written by people with high-functioning autism, God is more a principle than a person. He/it provides order but isn't much concerned with human affairs -- the idea of him satisfies the intellect rather than the emotions. Temple Grandin, for example, described God as the entanglement of millions of interacting particles.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-hutson/autism-atheism_b_1557098.html
The study:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0036880
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WriteWrong
(85 posts)Buddhism, Confucianism, Sikhi, shamanic practices the world around...
and Hinduism has the sense to call this kind of religious person "devotional" and admits that there are other kinds of people and other paths to religion than that of devotional belief.
Another nitwit that thinks "all the religions" includes Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism as well as the real ones.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)but as a natural energy force in all things and all being?
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)
LeftishBrit
(41,208 posts)e.g. sun worship, one of the oldest religions.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)laconicsax
(14,860 posts)I guess non-Abrahamic religions need not reply.
Thanks for posting some religious bigotry.
rug
(82,333 posts)
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)is science, then you do not know what science is.
rug
(82,333 posts)Read it.
Bad Thoughts
(2,524 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)mr blur
(7,753 posts)as I'm sure you know.
rug
(82,333 posts)Let's peer review it.
Unless you prefer to exchange epithets and snark.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)Jim_ posted the actual research downthread and it doesn't contain the explicitly bigoted remarks that your post features front-and-center
rug
(82,333 posts)And you do realize the fact that you call something bigoted may or may not comport with reality.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)More specifically, could you explain how the statement that Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Shinto, Wicca, and any other religion that doesn't feature a single, knowable, and personal god aren't "worth being called a religion" isn't bigoted?
In case you find that too broad a question, I'll separate it into individual, bite-sized questions:
Can you explain explain how "Buddhism isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Hinduism isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Sikhism isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Shinto isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Wicca isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Should I keep going with other examples of religions that don't feature an individual, personal and knowable god?
rug
(82,333 posts)I understand it is important for you to oppose bigotry, real or imagined, for purposes other than opposing bigotry, but this is a stretch even for you.
Are you trying to accuse the writer of bigotry for failing to list each religion?
Commendable of you to defend the rights of religion.
Oh, and you might want to remove those quotation marks. Those are your statements not the writer's.
Nice try, though, at another derailment and disruption.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)Now, if you will, please explain how saying that anything not having an individual, personal and knowable god isn't worth being called a religion isn't bigoted? Again, if that's too broad, I'll give you individual examples you can respond to:
Can you explain explain how "Buddhism isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Hinduism isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Sikhism isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Shinto isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
Can you explain explain how "Wicca isn't worth being called a religion" isn't a bigoted statement?
rug
(82,333 posts)Oh, and you might want to remove those quotation marks. Those are your statements not the writer's.
Nice try, though, at another derailment and disruption.
Let me add a further edit.
Are you opposed to bigotry toward nonwestern religions only or do you also oppose bigotry against Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals and Muslims? Given your posting history, a road map might keep you on course as you try to drag another religion thread into your favorite realm of preformed and prejudged notions.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)The entirety of the opening to the article (what's quoted above and what follows it) is bigoted, but since you're being yourself, I suppose I need to repeat the whole thing:
That opening contains two claims, one is inaccurate, the other is bigoted. The inaccurate claim is that "most religions" have a god that "is not just an impersonal force or creator. He has a mind that humans can relate to."
There are far more religions where that is not the case than ones where it is.
The second claim is bigoted. It is that "anything worth being called a religion" has a god that "is not just an impersonal force or creator. He has a mind that humans can relate to."
Analogous statements that follow that bigoted claim include: "Buddhism isn't worth being called a religion," "Hinduism isn't worth being called a religion," "Sikhism isn't worth being called a religion," "Shinto isn't worth being called a religion," and "Wicca isn't worth being called a religion" because none of those religions have a god that "is not just an impersonal force or creator" or "has a mind that humans can relate to."
Each of those statements express the same bigotry as what Hutson originally wrote. Now, would you care to respond to this, or are you going to continue to evade and say that my pointing out a bigoted statement in your OP is an attempt to disrupt and derail the thread?
And to your edit: I oppose bigotry regardless of whether it's expressed by the leadership of your church or a hack writer on HuffPo.
rug
(82,333 posts)The article concerns a study examining whether there is a connection between autism and an affinity for atheism. You don't like the study? Attack it and try to suppress it instead of your usual disruption and derailment. But this nonsense that the author of the article (not of the study) is a bigot against nonwestern religions invokes at least three logical fallacies and four rhetorical diversions and has nothing to do with the study.
Maybe you just don't like reading scientific studies on other ways of not knowing.
Oh, and the notion that you oppose religious bigotry, well .... 
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)The OP you posted starts with a statement of religious bigotry.
That you continue to dodge and deny this fact only serves to suggest that you agree with the idea that "anything worth being called a religion" has a personal, knowable god.
ladjf
(17,320 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)Bad Thoughts
(2,524 posts)I share a lot revulsion at the reduction in the very first sentence. However, I also find that the distinction between personal and impersonal utterly useless when belief systems tend to blend the two. Every religion has its caring mothers and unforgiving bulls.
Jim__
(14,077 posts)There should be more of these types of studies of religion and human psychology. From the introduction:
In neuroimaging studies, thinking about [14] and praying to [15] God activates brain regions implicated in mentalizing; thus mentalizing might be a necessary component of belief in God, without being a sufficient cause. When adults form inferences about God's mind, they show the same mentalizing biases that are typically found when reasoning about other peoples' minds [16]–[18]. Developmentally, children's reasoning about God's mental states, and about other non-physical agents, tracks the cognitive development of mentalizing tendencies [19], [20]. Finally, mentalizing is deficient at higher levels of the autism spectrum [8], [9], [21], [22], and interestingly men are both more likely to score high on the autism spectrum [23] and more likely to be non-believers [24]–[26]. These lines of evidence suggest that mentally representing supernatural beings (and their mental states) requires mentalizing capacities. This in turn implies that mentalizing deficits would constrain intuitive support for belief in God. Recent unpublished findings by Caldwell-Harris, Murphy, Velazquez, and McNamara (2011) provide some indirect support to this line of reasoning. Adults who reported being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder were more likely than a neuro-typical comparison group to self-identify as atheist and less likely to belong to an organized religion.
Interesting information. Thanks for posting this rug.
LeftishBrit
(41,208 posts)Having read the study, I think there are some issues that are not being considered:
(1) It's not just that autistic individuals are less likely to go to a place of worship, but that they are less subject to social influences. Thus, they may be less likely to conform to the belief system of those around them. In an atheist community, maybe they would be less likely to be atheists!
(2) People on the autistic spectrum tend to be literal-minded and to find it hard to deal with imagination, metaphor, symbolism. A lot of the presentation of religion is heavily based on metaphor and symbolism, and may therefore be less compelling to people with autism.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)ManyShadesOf
(639 posts)"God is not just an impersonal force or creator. He has a mind that humans can relate to. Maybe you're not gossiping on the phone with him late at night, but he has personality traits, thoughts, moods, and ways of communicating with you."
Does He have a Facebook page? Having a bad day, God? Someone cut you off in traffic? Your team didn't make the playoffs?
Are we to believe that people's experience of God is just short of celestial texting? Is the author talking about Zeus or personal experience of connection with Spirit? "Personality traits, thoughts, moods ..." This seems to trivialize the actual experience ... it can be personal without being A Person.
