Does autism lead to atheism?

[Revoltingest]

In our family, the one theist is our son who is on the autism spectrum. Everyone else is either agnostic or non-theist. So, can't tell.

This is interesting....may I pry a little? Does he see religion as the explanation/mechanism behind the natural world? Or does he feel the presence of a supernatural spirit (ie, God)? Or is it some combination, or something else?

 

[MysticSang'ha]

This is interesting....may I pry a little? Does he see religion as the explanation/mechanism behind the natural world? Or does he feel the presence of a supernatural spirit (ie, God)? Or is it some combination, or something else?

From what he has communicated, he sees God as always existing. I haven't seen him or heard him see God as an explanation or act as a Creator God. But he does pray. It's out of a sense of reverence more so than pleas or requests. I've asked him before about God, and he says "God's everywhere. God's always been here. God will always be here."

And he finds happiness in it. I think he's still exploring exactly how and why. But it would be silly of me to intrude and to try to deviate him when it brings him solace and happiness. He has never asked me if I believe. And he has never requested anybody else believe in God. It's just how he sees the universe and life in general. I asked him if he wanted a Bible to read, and he showed me he got one already from his biological father. I asked him if he reads it. He said, "No. I don't want to. God's everywhere. The Bible's just a story."

That's a good question you asked. I'm fascinated with my sons spiritual journey and how the world occurs to him. I don't think I've scratched the surface on understanding his faith, but I totally respect it and give him props.

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

In fairness, my symptoms aren't that severe, and there are times when they become troublesome. But I'm introverted, anyway, so it's generally okay with me.

I was pretty much fine with it, until I got married. It has caused some problems in family life, though.

One could say the person with an ASD has their pet 'interest' as their religion. For some, this obsession IS religion, or sometimes lack of religion.

It is for me.

s it that they're more analytical and rational, or is it a matter of them having a harder time with abstract thought?

Probably a combination of the two.

We have to remember that there is a difference between theism and religion. I'm Aspie, very religious, yet a non-theist. Religion can, sometimes, give a structure that autistics need, especially if the religion, like Buddhism, doesn't require group or social settings. Sometimes, I think Buddhism is a perfect religion for those of us who are autistic, and Taoism would be a good one, as well.

 

[Revoltingest]

From what he has communicated, he sees God as always existing. I haven't seen him or heard him see God as an explanation or act as a Creator God. But he does pray. It's out of a sense of reverence more so than pleas or requests. I've asked him before about God, and he says "God's everywhere. God's always been here. God will always be here."

And he finds happiness in it. I think he's still exploring exactly how and why. But it would be silly of me to intrude and to try to deviate him when it brings him solace and happiness. He has never asked me if I believe. And he has never requested anybody else believe in God. It's just how he sees the universe and life in general. I asked him if he wanted a Bible to read, and he showed me he got one already from his biological father. I asked him if he reads it. He said, "No. I don't want to. God's everywhere. The Bible's just a story."

That's a good question you asked. I'm fascinated with my sons spiritual journey and how the world occurs to him. I don't think I've scratched the surface on understanding his faith, but I totally respect it and give him props.

I'm interested in knowing more if you have anything else appropriate to relate.
He seems an unusual kid. (That's good, btw.)

 

[Riverwolf]

I was pretty much fine with it, until I got married. It has caused some problems in family life, though.

Makes sense.

My GF and I are trying to come up with coping mechanisms to minimize potential future problems.

 

[MysticSang'ha]

I'm interested in knowing more if you have anything else appropriate to relate.
He seems an unusual kid. (That's good, btw.)

LOL yep. He's weird. He fits in well with our family.

I remembered not too long ago when my grandmother died, he was close to her too. People often would say that she's with God now, and my son didn't feel that way. To him, she was dead. No more. She is gone, and all we have is memory. No heaven. No angel wings. No hallelujahs. His great grandmother is gone.

I know he has a hard time explaining something so simple to him because he struggles anyway with processing and with communicating to us neurotypicals. But I have found him not to believe in an afterlife. Just life and death and God.

Every now and then I'll hear him agreeing with another family member about Jesus being our Lord and Savior. So afterward I'll be driving with him and I'll say that I didn't know he believed in Jesus. He'll say, "Yeah, mom." I'll ask him, "What do you think about Jesus?" And he'll say, "I don't know. He's nice." I'll ask him if he knows what a Lord and Savior means, and he says, "I guess it means he's nice."

Then I'll ask, "Is Jesus God?" And he laughs and says, "HAHAHAHA....NO mom! That's funny!!" And he just goes into a fit of laughter.

My observations with him are that he doesn't put any identity at all on his concept of God. There is no such thing as a deity that is anthropomorphic. It's like trying to place personhood on the breath. Happy or sad, sick or healthy, the breath is there continuing on and on. But the breath doesn't have a name or a face and you can't talk to it.

I think that's the way I see him perceiving God.

 

[psychoslice]

Riverwolf:And speaking as an aspie, trust me: that's an overly simplistic way of looking at things.

Religion didn't "have its chance", any more than "science had its chance" (as some religious nuts claim because some technological developments have done more harm than good.)

Religious behavior is part of our species. It's not going anywhere.


I don't agree, religion did have its way and that was called the dark ages, science or intelligent thinking helped to bring us out of the dark ages. We maybe conditioned as a species to be religious, but that doesn't mean its right or wrong, myself I go beyond religion.

Riverkwolf; Don't confuse all religion with organized religion.

I haven't confused religion with organized religion, most religion is organized, and I do know the difference, I respect the mystics of all religions.

 

[Riverwolf]

I don't agree, religion did have its way and that was called the dark ages, science or intelligent thinking helped to bring us out of the dark ages. We maybe conditioned as a species to be religious, but that doesn't mean its right or wrong, myself I go beyond religion.

The European dark ages had little to do with religion, despite what anti-theist propaganda would say. Frankly that junk is not any more reliable than YEC propaganda. Don't trust everything you read on the internet.

I actually looked into it, and what happened in Europe was that the Western Roman Empire collapsed.

What would you expect to happen when something that big collapses and influential into nothing? What do you think that does to a population? Especially when that happened to coincide with the Migration Period of the Germanic Tribes, who proceeded to conquer the former Roman lands (partially because they were driven out of their own homelands by the Huns and other such tribes). These were not friendly times.

The dark ages (referring to a time of massive social upheaval and a terrible standard of living under petty kings and warlords) (~400AD - ~900AD) ended when Europe recovered and entered the medieval times(~900AD - ~1300AD roughly around the Black Death), during which the foundations of much of modern science was laid, by religiously devout monks, and most of the knowledge of the pre-Christian world was committed to writing, so they might never be lost.

'Sides, during the European dark ages, the Islamic world was in a golden age.

Religion was just as powerful before the European Dark Ages as it was during and after, seeing the rise and fall of empires, golden and dark ages coming and going.

I also remind you that the reason this period was called "the dark age" because when that term was applied to this time period, the amount of knowledge we had on it was scarce. This is no longer the case.

I haven't confused religion with organized religion, most religion is organized, and I do know the difference, I respect the mystics of all religions.

No, most religions aren't organized; they're personal. It just so happens that a few organized religions are big.

 

[psychoslice]

Hi riverwolf, I don't know where you get your knowledge from, but its no where I get mine, so its hard from to comment on what you said, but I will look into it, but at this stage I can only go by what I myself have found, and I do feel that what I have shared has much truth within it.

 

[Revoltingest]

LOL yep. He's weird. He fits in well with our family.

I remembered not too long ago when my grandmother died, he was close to her too. People often would say that she's with God now, and my son didn't feel that way. To him, she was dead. No more. She is gone, and all we have is memory. No heaven. No angel wings. No hallelujahs. His great grandmother is gone.

I know he has a hard time explaining something so simple to him because he struggles anyway with processing and with communicating to us neurotypicals. But I have found him not to believe in an afterlife. Just life and death and God.

Every now and then I'll hear him agreeing with another family member about Jesus being our Lord and Savior. So afterward I'll be driving with him and I'll say that I didn't know he believed in Jesus. He'll say, "Yeah, mom." I'll ask him, "What do you think about Jesus?" And he'll say, "I don't know. He's nice." I'll ask him if he knows what a Lord and Savior means, and he says, "I guess it means he's nice."

Then I'll ask, "Is Jesus God?" And he laughs and says, "HAHAHAHA....NO mom! That's funny!!" And he just goes into a fit of laughter.

My observations with him are that he doesn't put any identity at all on his concept of God. There is no such thing as a deity that is anthropomorphic. It's like trying to place personhood on the breath. Happy or sad, sick or healthy, the breath is there continuing on and on. But the breath doesn't have a name or a face and you can't talk to it.

I think that's the way I see him perceiving God.

He seems easy to talk to.

 

[Ablaze]

Although there may be a disproportionately high number of autistic-atheists (compared to autistic-Christians, for instance), I don't agree that there is any direct, causal relationship.

I am not autistic, nor do I fall anywhere on the spectrum, yet I do not believe in God. However, I try to make it clear that mine is a non-belief in the existence of God, not a belief in the non-existence of God.

One trend I have noticed, though, is that atheists tend to gravitate more toward the natural sciences. Still, I wouldn't attribute any causal relationship to this, nor do I feel there is any directionality to the relationship.

 

[Penumbra]

One trend I have noticed, though, is that atheists tend to gravitate more toward the natural sciences. Still, I wouldn't attribute any causal relationship to this, nor do I feel there is any directionality to the relationship.

Surveys have found that scientists tend to report much higher levels of agnosticism and atheism than the general population, and much less fundamentalism than the general population.

I think there is a pretty strong link there. People that think in analytical terms, that build conclusions based on evidence, when confronted with a marketplace of competing metaphysical claims, would reasonably look at evidence. Lacking compelling evidence to select one religion over another, many would be agnostic or atheist.

 

[Ablaze]

Surveys have found that scientists tend to report much higher levels of agnosticism and atheism than the general population, and much less fundamentalism than the general population.

I think there is a pretty strong link there. People that think in analytical terms, that build conclusions based on evidence, when confronted with a marketplace of competing metaphysical claims, would reasonably look at evidence. Lacking compelling evidence to select one religion over another, many would be agnostic or atheist.

Correlation does not imply causation. The strength of the link is indisputable. There is definitely a relationship. Yet I would still not call that direct causation any moreso than I would say that not having autism causes or leads to theism.

 

[Penumbra]

Correlation does not imply causation. The strength of the link is indisputable. There is definitely a relationship. Yet I would still not call that direct causation any moreso than I would say that not having autism causes or leads to theism.

My three comments would be,

1) It depends on the strength of the link. The percentage of scientists that are atheistic or agnostic is much higher than the general population, not just a little bit higher. A small link means little, a strong link is far more interesting.

2) When a strong link is present, it's useful to examine which one of the two groups appears to be like a subset to the other. This can be useful as a piece of evidence for causation. For example, if the subset of atheists and agnostics is 10x bigger than the subset of scientists, and we say that most professional scientists are atheists or agnostics but that most atheists and agnostics are not professional scientists, then we have a clue about the direction of the link. In this case, we could say that being a professional scientist means it's likely that someone is agnostic or atheist, but that being an atheist or agnostic does not mean it's likely that someone is a professional scientist.

3) To add to a finding of correlation to turn it into evidence of causation, hypotheses and data collection can be used. If we have two variables that are correlated but we can't find a reason they are correlated, it would be hard to say they are causal, that one is a big factor in causing the other. For example, if people who like strawberries more than blueberries are more likely to say that Saving Private Ryan is their favorite movie than the general population, I wouldn't know where to begin explaining the causal link. But if a convincing argument can be made regarding their reasons for overlap, then causation can be argued. As a simple survey example, look at this poll about atheists. The #1 reason given for their lack of belief in god (more than all other given reasons combined) is lack of evidence, which supports what I proposed in my previous post, and works well with the survey results that professional scientists are much more likely to be agnostic or atheist than the general population.

 

[Ablaze]

From a scientific perspective, causation can only be established through controlled experiments. One would have to produce more than a mere survey or self-report (which can only establish statistical correlation) in order to prove that there are any causal links. Perhaps it's different in philosophy, where "causation can be argued" more easily.

 

[Penumbra]

From a scientific perspective, causation can only be established through controlled experiments. One would have to produce more than a mere survey or self-report (which can only establish statistical correlation) in order to prove that there are any causal links. Perhaps it's different in philosophy, where "causation can be argued" more easily.

That didn't address any of my points.

 

[Ablaze]

That didn't address any of my points.

It addressed the use of self-reports, polls, and surveys - which cannot establish causation.

Again, autism does not lead to atheism any more than not having autism leads to theism. They may be statistically correlated, and the p-value may be exceptionally low (a good thing for statistical significance), but that does not necessarily mean they are causally linked.

 

[Penumbra]

It addressed the use of self-reports, polls, and surveys - which cannot establish causation.

Again, autism does not lead to atheism any more than not having autism leads to theism. They may be statistically correlated, and the p-value may be exceptionally low (a good thing for statistical significance), but that does not necessarily mean they are causally linked.

No, but it's part of evidence, and that still doesn't address my other point about examining which one is the subset and which one is the superset.

If there are two groups that are highly correlated, with a large enough sample size, then we can know statistically that this is not a coincidence. It's correlated, but not necessarily causal. So if it didn't happen by chance, then either one leads to another, or a third variable or set of variables leads to both. The first step is to see if you can eliminate one of the directions of possible causation, and the easiest way to do that is to see which group is much larger than the other. That eliminates one of the possibilities. Then, either the other group statistically leads to the other, or a third variable leads to both. In this case, we could have a pretty good argument, since there's no way to have absolute proof about anything, that either being scientifically inclined is likely to lead to atheism/agnosticism, or perhaps that having a particularly analytical nature leads to higher chances of being an atheist/agnostic, and higher chances of being a scientist.

When absolute proof is not available (and it never is, only evidence), then you don't just say "there's no way to know". Instead, you find which explanation is most probable, through a combination of finding which groups are larger, what survey results are, how strong the various correlative links are, etc.

I haven't seen any numbers here about the degree of correlation between atheism and autism. The correlation between professional scientists and atheism tends to be reported as big, though.

 

[Ablaze]

If there are two groups that are highly correlated, with a large enough sample size, then we can know statistically that this is not a coincidence. It's correlated, but not necessarily causal. So if it didn't happen by chance, then either one leads to another, or a third variable or set of variables leads to both. The first step is to see if you can eliminate one of the directions of possible causation, and the easiest way to do that is to see which group is much larger than the other. That eliminates one of the possibilities. Then, either the other group statistically leads to the other, or a third variable leads to both. In this case, we could have a pretty good argument, since there's no way to have absolute proof about anything, that either being scientifically inclined is likely to lead to atheism/agnosticism, or perhaps that having a particularly analytical nature leads to higher chances of being an atheist/agnostic, and higher chances of being a scientist.

Agreed.

By chance, do you identify as autistic or on the autism spectrum, and if so, do you see this as the cause for your atheism (assuming you identify as both)?

I wonder how many people here would, from personal experience, attribute a causal relationship to the two.

 

[Penumbra]

Agreed.

By chance, do you identify as autistic or on the autism spectrum, and if so, do you see this as the cause for your atheism (assuming you identify as both)?

No, I am not on the autistic spectrum.

"Atheist" is generally not a term I use as a form of identification in any context other than a place like this forum, for similar reasons that I don't identify myself as a "non-Canadian", but I don't label anything I believe to exist as a god, and don't believe in supernatural personal intelligences that are involved with human lives, so I do identify with the term atheist when it's asked. So for this thread I'm a non-autistic atheist for labeling purposes.

I wonder how many people here would, from personal experience, attribute a causal relationship to the two.

I can't speak for other people. I already shared my view on that subject:

I wouldn't be surprised about a statistical correlation between people on the autistic spectrum and atheists. Especially looking back over the known history of religions, it seems that much of theism is based on personalizing impersonal things. Animists often represented things like rivers and mountains as having a personality, and polytheistic religions often associated various goddesses and gods with the various archetypes of their world. Monotheists, in my view, anthropomorphize the universe.

If humans tend to humanize things they encounter, and try to interpret non-human things as though they act in human ways, I wouldn't be surprised if people with less developed social understanding are less likely to interpret the world in that way.

But, a correlation doesn't imply significant overlap. Many autistic people are not atheists, and many atheists are not autistic. As far as I can tell personally, I know several atheists but few or no people on the autistic spectrum.