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Autism and atheism

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wavefreak58
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12 Jan 2011, 5:23 pm

XFilesGeek wrote:
wavefreak58 wrote:
XFilesGeek wrote:
I am as likely to have something in common with other atheists as I am with my fellow non-pickled-pigs-feet eaters. Are you going to claim that I am part of a community of people who have yet to try pickled pigs' feet?


So if I commissioned a study regarding atheists, their beliefs and their tendencies I would find no commonalities among them?


You might. You also might find commonalities among those of of who have never tried eating pickled pigs feet. Still not a "community" as by the definitition I posted.


So busy parsing. Why do you have such an irrational avoidance of being part of a community?


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XFilesGeek
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15 Jan 2011, 1:57 pm

wavefreak58 wrote:
XFilesGeek wrote:
wavefreak58 wrote:
XFilesGeek wrote:
I am as likely to have something in common with other atheists as I am with my fellow non-pickled-pigs-feet eaters. Are you going to claim that I am part of a community of people who have yet to try pickled pigs' feet?


So if I commissioned a study regarding atheists, their beliefs and their tendencies I would find no commonalities among them?


You might. You also might find commonalities among those of of who have never tried eating pickled pigs feet. Still not a "community" as by the definitition I posted.


So busy parsing. Why do you have such an irrational avoidance of being part of a community?


Because it's not accurate.

Why do you have such an irrational need to make me part of a community? In what ways is "atheism" a "community" by the standard definition? What is the over-arching philosophy of "atheism?" What are our politics? What common history do we share and how does it affect our worldview? If you're claiming atheists are a "community," and you mean "community" in any other sense then "group," then you should be able to support that assertion.

So far, all I've gotten out of this thread is there are some atheists who sometimes hold strong opinions like some theists hold strong opinions. Big, fat, hairy deal. Not much evidence for a "community," nor is it solid ground on which to make silly generalizations about a group of people as disparate as "atheists," unless the entire point of describing an atheist "community" in the first place is the desire to make gross generalizations.

If you simply mean to describe "atheists" as a "group of people," then have at it, but be aware that lacking a belief in a diety implies nothing else besides lacking a belief in a diety.


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15 Jan 2011, 2:49 pm

One of the major features of Autistic spectrum disorders is a dissimilar mirror neuron system that doesn't internally "replicate" other people's emotions/behaviours as well as a "neurologically typical" one would. There is also a bit of evidence from neurotheology that religious belief, particularly concerning the intentions of supposed supernatural agents, is based on a mirror neuron activity - a sort of social hyper-imagination effect. There really is quite a bit of truth in the polemical device of anti-theists who refer to God as peoples' "imaginary friend".

PZ Myers wrote:
The rest of The God Delusion is generally more speculative. If God or gods almost certainly do not exist, then why is religion so embedded in human culture? Dawkins sketches a review of some possible answers, but his preferred hypothesis is this: Religion does not confer a direct adaptive advantage, but is instead a byproduct of some other property that is useful for survival. Dawkins suggests that the root of religion lies in the efficiency of a shortcut. In childhood, a bit of credulity and the ability to mind one’s elders are extremely useful traits. Trial-and-error learning can be expensive—consider the cost of, for instance, learning firsthand why not to swim with crocodiles. To trust and obey authority figures is far preferable. The idea is interesting, but Dawkins overlooks another potential determinant: Empathy. It is both an extremely useful skill for navigating the complex social landscapes of human culture (so useful that it is taken for granted), and it is easily displaced onto nonhuman entities or objects. Most significantly, we have evidence from the neurophysiology of mirror neurons that empathy is to some extent hardwired into the brain. At least, it’s a better-documented biological property than obedience (which, as I recall from raising my own children, was not particularly reliable).


http://seedmagazine.com/content/article ... d_dawkins/


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