Are most people with Asperger's Atheists?

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I'm Christian (Protestant/baptist). I'm on the computer most of the time and lurk on many forums. Seems that a large number of people on the interest either are atheists, democrats, or dislikes Christians, but I think the group seems so big because they tend share their views more often than others groups. Or maybe I should lurk on other forums. Just my two cents.

An estimated 2.5% of the world's population consider themselves Atheist. The correlation has the strongest relationship to cultural differences. If you go to a country where the majority of people identify themselves as Atheists chances are most "NT"s are Atheist.

There are many more people in the UK, that consider themselves Atheists and Irreligious, so on a day to day basis, you may come into contact with many NT's that don't even consider religion. However in the US, the percentage is very small, religion is a constant topic of conversation in some areas of our country.

The research to the relationship to Aspergers, is one of potential biological basis. However, not all those diagnosed with Aspergers or Autism have the same biological/psychological characteristics, and obviously not all people with Aspergers or Autism consider themselves Atheists.

It is commonly understood that there is a strong emotional component involved in beliefs of all kinds. There are people that experience strong emotions with Autism and Aspergers, so it is possible they experience belief, faith, and prayer, differently than those that don't experience strong emotions. No causation here, just correlation.

You seem very proud of your faith; it is possible that not all people get the same benefit out of it that you do. Perhaps, that makes you one of the lucky ones.

Some atheists believe that the word "atheism" means lack of belief in a "God", instead of meaning disbelief in the idea of a "God".

Vince's argument is that everyone is born an atheist not because they were born with an active disbelief in "God", but instead because they were born without knowledge about the concept of "God".

You cannot say what an infant conceptualizes. You can only say that whatever is conceptualized in an infant's mind cannot be communicated to others.



You cannot demonstrate what an infant is aware of. You can only surmise. This is in itself a belief. The infant brain is quite functional. Are you suggesting that an infant has no mind? Because an infant lacks words to communicate, you assume it has no thought? If it has thought, can you be sure that it has no belief?

One does not even need to be aware of the concept of belief to have belief. Belief is a meta-concept. We need not define nor discuss it for it to exist. Attaching words and definitions around the concept allows us to communicate our thoughts about belief, but we are not required to do so in order to have belief.



Then there are no atheists because everyone has belief. Not necessarily in god, but belief nonetheless.

It is not possible to be without belief as nothing can be proven with absolute certainty. Even if you believe that science is the best tool for the apprehension of reality, it is still a belief.

Belief IS the default state. Only the structures of belief varies.


If there is no belief in the mind of an infant, and the infant must be exposed to belief to acquire it, whence came the first belief? Someone violated this premise because they gained belief without being exposed to it.

You cannot escape it. You believe. You believe differently, but it is still belief.

Atheism isn't an ideological stance. It's simply the state of not being a theist. It can be both passive (as the default position) and active (as part of an ideological or philosophical stance, such as for example antitheism, naturalism, absurdism, communism, Buddhism, Raelianism, et.c.).
Atheism in and of itself is not an ideology or a belief, it's simply a word describing the state of not being a theist, for whatever reason, including never having heard of gods.

You mean Marxism. Communism is an economic system.

Last edited by The_Walrus on 25 Jun 2011, 5:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Definitions of atheism:

noun: a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods
noun: the doctrine or belief that there is no God

Atheism is not the lack of any belief whatsoever, only the lack of belief in a god.

The sooner people learn this, the sooner my blood pressure can go down.

Try telling a series of neurologists that a newborn infant, at the very moment of birth, is capable of conceptualizing something as complex as a god. Please film their reactions.


Infants have thoughts, surely, but their brains aren't developed enough to grasp things as complex as mythological beings, especially before anyone has communicated these ideas to them or before they've had the time to look around and make assumptions. Similarly, a newborn can't conceptualize a computer, because the information has not been entered into their brain. The information has to come from somewhere. Nobody is born with knowledge about things. Instincts, sure, but not information. It's not just a matter of the baby not being able to communicate. The baby just got out of the womb, it has experienced nothing except birth, and its imagination is not yet developed enough to make up a complex backstory of the universe just from the experience of being born.


I didn't say that atheism is the lack of all belief. I said it's the absence of one belief. Specifically the belief that gods exist. This I've said several times, pay attention. A person can have all sorts of other beliefs and still be an atheist. I believe plenty of things. I try to make sure they're demonstrably true before I believe them (and I examine them further when they might not and abandon them when they turn out not to be), but even if I didn't, even if I believed in ghosts and faeries and homeopathy and the Easter Bunny (which I don't), I'd still be an atheist simply by not believing in gods. Even if that was because I'd never heard of gods, because atheism is the state of not being a god-believer, nothing more, nothing less.


From that we can draw the conclusion that you believe in the Blargamorphic Gorgleplaft, since you've never heard of it before, and belief apparently is your default state. I'm so sorry to hear that. If I believed in such a foul beast, I'd sleep even less at night.


Beliefs come from two main places other than communication: Observation and assumption. These are things that a child becomes quickly capable of, but at the very moment of birth, no observations or assumptions have yet been made. You enter life pretty much a blank slate, save for genetic predispositions and instincts, and then you start observing and assuming things, and eventually you start being told things as well. Then you start being capable of figuring things out logically. It's a gradual thing. Sometimes it happens in a different order and sometimes a step is skipped, but the point is none of these things happen before the birth.


Completely irrelevant statement. I never claimed to be completely without beliefs.

To this question I can either answer "no" or "sort of". Depends on what "version" of communism one is referring to, and whether one defines it by its central ideals or by various policies associated with it in the Soviet Union. I could've said Marxism, yes, and that may have been less confusing, but I said communism for the same reason I said Buddhism:: Atheism isn't a necessary element of it, but to some people it's a part of the ideology.

I think it would make more sense to say "Not old enough to know."

You're missing my point. Someone who is not old enough to know, isn't a theist. As such, they're an atheist, since that's just another word for "not theist". You don't have to know anything in order to be an atheist. It's not a commitment, it's just a word describing a person who is not a theist, whether actively or passively, and whether they'll stay that way or not.
Your objection is comparable to saying "I don't wanna call this paper blank, 'cause I haven't decided if I wanna draw on it yet". Well, until you draw on it, it's blank, whether you wanna call it that or not.

I'm an atheist although I don't think it has anything to do with being aspergers. I just view all religion as a man made construct, which was spread around the world through violence and coercion.

Different people have different definitions of atheism. Some (most?) people think that you have to actively disbelieve in god(s) to be an atheist, otherwise you're agnostic. Others, like yourself, take the word literally, and think that anyone who isn't a theist must be an atheist. Neither position is right or wrong.

No.

It's like pointing out the paper is blank when someone else is insisting that blank means that the word "atheist" is written on it, and it is only not blank when you write the word "theist" on it.

I am pretty agnostic about claiming to understand what goes on in an infant's mind. I am hesitant to ascribe any sort of stance or state of knowledge to someone who has not yet developed to a stage of maturity where such things are remotely relevant. You're assigning constructed social definitions to someone who has not yet been imprinted with social constructs.

Note that I am not arguing that infants by default believe in any gods.

I'm very much the same as Verdandi...

All I can add is that to me many "religions" in general - and Christianity in particular - seem to have a bad case of battered wife syndrome. I am under no nonsensical illusion that "the all powerful" is benevolent. The Ancient Greeks probably had the most realistic outlook on it all...

I of course prefer the "human constructs" that teach tolerance, peace and charity to all.

Again, you misunderstand me. The blank paper is an analogy. To throw the words "atheist" and "theist" into the paper analogy is to not even understand how an analogy works. The word "blank" here describes the current status of the paper in relation to whether it has been drawn on, in the same way that "atheist" describes the current status of the infant in relation to whether it has accepted the claim that a god exists. The infant isn't an atheist by ideology, but by definition. The word doesn't imply anything else by itself.


No I'm not. Atheism isn't a stance. It's a descriptive noun that doesn't necessarily imply any particular belief or stance unless you add "active" or "positive" or a similar specification in front of it. When I say that an infant is an atheist, I'm not saying that the infant has any stance or opinion or belief about god, I'm simply saying that the infant isn't a theist. Much like how the blank paper isn't drawn on, so it is by definition blank. If an infant isn't an atheist because atheism is a social construct, then the paper isn't blank because blank is an aesthetic construct.