Are autistic/ASD people more likely to be atheist?

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Do you think autistic people are more likely to be atheist than the general population? Why or why not?

I honestly think they're about even. I've met both religious autistic people and autistic atheists. I'm Catholic, but I'm not particularly religious (I'm probably more culturally Catholic than religiously - being Italian-American means I grew up around Catholicism).

I think atheists might be over-represented among austistics, but that religious fundamentalism also might be more common among autistics and undiagnosed autistics.

Religious fundamentalism appeals to black and white thinkers and some on the spectrum are black and white thinkers. On the other hand, autistics are more likely to deviate from social norms, so they might be more apt to question and leave religion behind if they were brought up in a religious household. From a personal standpoint, I just wasn’t getting anything positive out of religion because I was not a social person and had little in common with people from church.

Church is a very social thing for religious people and some people who don't even believe in God join churches for the social aspect of it all.

Religious beliefs can be held privately however.

I personally find that there seem to be more autistic atheists than autistic religious folk.

I think autistic/ASD people are more likely to question religion by asking such things as,"If God loves everyone, then..."

"Why did he create me in a way that makes people treat me like garbage?"

"Why did He let my puppy get killed by being run over by a car?"

"Why did He kill thousands of people, and that's not even including the flood, while Satan only killed ten people?"

Well, if this study is correct, and it seems to have looked at the situation pretty carefully, then yes we are more likely to be atheist:

"Persons with autistic spectrum disorder were much more likely than those in our neurotypical comparison group to identify as atheist or agnostic, and, if religious, were more likely to construct their own religious belief system. Nonbelief was also higher in those who were attracted to systemizing activities, as measured by the Systemizing Quotient"

https://escholarship.org/content/qt6zh3 ... 99502e.pdf

Of course it's only a general tendency, not an absolute binary thing, but as an Aspie I can see how my own thinking style would tend to make me pretty impervious to religious persuasion. I do a lot of critical thinking. I seem to be too scientific and logical to fully believe anything, and belief is massively important with most religions. OTOH I don't know what would have happened if I'd been raised by theist parents who had got me believing in my formative years before I'd learned to think for myself. Still, I once fully believed in Father Christmas because my parents told me he existed, yet as my mind developed I questioned it and eventually rejected it.

Not that I don’t read religious texts or avoid relationships with extremely religious people, I just try and avoid the subject entirely or mention I was raised atheist and discuss religious topics with family about as frequently as what is considered acceptable in a professional environment

Most of the autistic people I have met tend to be athiests.

I used to think of myself as an omnist but now I'm starting to question that too, but personally I find the concept of atheism depressing as f**k.

So I don't really know what I believe in anymore.

I feel strongly like there is nothing that comes after death. Just a night without a dream, without waking up.

I feel like it would be extremely arrogant on my end to think that any belief I have in this life will make my death, or events afterwards, any “different” from anyone else’s.

So instead of feeling depressed for myself, I feel depressed for people who repress or police their behavior in life in hopes of some payoff after they die. I just think this is extremely sad and unhealthy. I’ve never seen this happen to people repressing “evils” or ethically fraught things, either. Really the only thing I see with any frequency are people who are closeted with their identity as a result of this “hell awaits me” mindset

It would certainly be exciting if supernatural phenomena happened. I looked for them when I was young, but I suppose my "mistake" was to be rational and to insist on good evidence. I found nothing, and slowly and reluctantly was forced to concede that the supernatural very likely just wasn't there. Still, there's comfort in noticing that real phenomena can also be very interesting and exciting - the human mind, for example can be wonderfully fascinating and mysterious - and that secular life doesn't necessarily have to be depressing or dull.

It's a shame in a way that I had to abandon the idea that I'd have an afterlife, but I think it's better than having to live with the risk of being sent to hell for remorselessly disobeying the deity's laws - I don't know how anybody could even be sure quite which version of religion to follow in order to avoid that, nor does it seem possible for me to be truly sorry for breaking a law if after an honest search I see no harm in breaking. Going out like a candle flame isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person.

The ones I feel sorry for are those who have believed they'd go to Heaven and then lost their faith later in life. They'd not have the advantage of all those years of atheism during which they could come to terms with there being no afterlife. Rather like heroin addiction - if you've never used it, then not using it never gives you withdrawal symptoms, but if you're a chronic user and you quit, you might miss it for the rest of your life. Better to let religionists carry on believing (not that they're likely to be influenced by my "preaching in reverse"), and just remind them that God's human representatives are often fallible or corrupt. But for some reason it can be hard to resist the temptation to debunk religion. Aspies often feel strongly motivated to set people straight when they seem to be misapprehending reality. At least I do, and I've heard of other cases.

I never really cared much for the heaven and hell thing tbh. When I started reading more about the afterlife in ancient religions around the world I realized that many of them didnt really believe in a happy paradise for all the good little boys and girls after death. They believed in the idea that the 'Underworld' was simply just a gloomy place where all the dead go to fade away. You can see this in the Greek Underworld, Japan's "Yomi", and "Kur" in Mesopotamia.

I feel like ancient people had a much more advanced view of things than people in the modern world do. The idea of an afterlife without salvation and gods who are indifferent towards humans always seemed much more appealing to me for this very reason.

^
Yes a lot of the "fire and brimstone" dogma about hell does seem to be down to latter day add-ons, though I'd probably have to at least read the entire Old Testament to find out whether the concept is in there or not. They were quite nice to us about hell at school, and just told us that if we were good then we'd go to Heaven, and if we were bad then "we aren't so sure" as the headmistress put it. Dear old soft-touch Church of England with its quaint, innocuous vicars, cups of tea and cakes I think one of their archbishops even said it was OK to see God as an allegorical thing. On a good day I could almost sign up with the Anglicans.

Lol well I went to Sunday School a few times at a Southern Baptist Church as a kid (My mom wasnt particularly religious in raising us kids but my Nana wanted us to go).

I had what's known as a "fire-breathing baptist" for my Sunday School teacher who told us literally everything was evil. Women were evil (despite the fact that she herself was a woman), Rock music was evil, Pokemon were evil, Harry Potter was evil, etc.

I'd say so and I've read this many places, that people on The Spectrum are more likely to be atheists. I would describe myself as strongly agnostic or weak atheist. In my view, it has to do with thinking logically. Using science and proven facts. Not feelings or " this is how I want it to be".

Religious nuts and science deniers just drive me bananas.

I'm still looking into the question of why we're more atheistic than NTs, but my current favourite explanation is that we're less suggestible, as we tend to have minds of our own once we've matured a bit. I see it all the time in religious promotional material and in other forms of propaganda such as advertising, political memes, and even many government communications. None of it is anything more than an insult to my intelligence. I'm still freshly perplexed every time I notice that such practices haven't died out yet.

But then you have those people with both autism and another underlying mental illness (like myself having bipolar disorder type 1 with psychosis) who seem to be easily influenced by magical thinking and believe me when I say it gets worse in those unstable moments.