Are most people with Asperger's Atheists?

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Does the baby have any experience of the "numinous"? Will the baby ever do so, a good chance I'd think, since this feeling opr experience of the numinous is what I think comes before religious cultural constructs. And good or bad, religion is everywhere.

Will the baby, if it had words, use the word "God" to refer to this experience?

God is simply a signifier, a word.

To say that a baby is an atheist, meaning a physicalist/materialist, is to say that a baby is without any experience, intuition, feeling, for depth, or a sense for something which brings a feeling for the spiritual or religious, the awe-inspiring.

The question is, I think, does or will the baby have this?

If so, what word would the baby use or, eventually use, to describe this?

It could be called fartknocker but it would still be a word to denote this experience.

(Note~ I looked up words and such to be able to say what I mean from things I previously read and thought about and admittedly have a hard time grasping. And, me saying this does not mean I do or do not believe God is a person. If I do believe in God it is more complicated than what I've seen some argue against or some may even believe in)

Last edited by Jediscraps on 25 Jun 2011, 8:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I understand what analogies are and I understood what your analogy was. I changed the analogy to make a rather explicit point. I could have used any word, but that point was that in my modified analogy, you are showing me a piece of paper that you have written on and saying that it is blank. Or you are showing me nothing and saying it means something when it simply means nothing.

I'm really tired of this exchange and your assumptions about my comprehension. Disagreement does not equal misunderstanding. It simply means disagreement. I am capable of understanding your words, I simply do not think they describe reality.

Does one have to have language to experience God?

If I have very little language and equate my experience of God with feeling and perception, without regard to discrete description, should I be labeled as an Atheist?

If I have the same experience that others describe as God, but lack the symbolism to explain it the way they do, should I be labeled as an Atheist?

Are all people that don't have the ability to communicate their feelings and perceptions about what they consider the word "God", Atheists?

Is an elephant an Atheist? Is a Dolphin an Atheist? Could they have the ability to sense and feel what others describe as God, a thousand fold over what humans experience?

Is God just a word, a logical construct?

Life entails much more than language and logic, we attempt to make it a concrete experience, but that is not reality, science provides evidence for this.

A discussion on atheism and theism is not clear unless one provides a common definition for God. There is not a number for the potential definitions for the word God. If the God I believe in is a maybe God it means I believe God might exist. A belief that God might exist is not the same as a lack of belief that God exists. Are these next two statements equivalent?

I lack a belief in God.
I believe God might exist, but on the other hand God might not exist.

It might be a wishy washy belief in the existence of God, but never the less it is a belief about the existence of God

Beliefs can't always be clearly explained with language. One can impose a certain word or definition, but that doesn't mean other words, perceptions, or feelings do not exist that by themselves provide a similar experience or awareness of the belief.

Beliefs are not necessarily concrete objects, they can be flavored with an infinite number of feelings, sensations, memories, and other descriptors that within my realm of human experience, have not been a part of my world.

Maybe it could be better understood this way:

I lack a belief in Unicorns.
I believe Unicorns might exist, but on the other hand they might not exist.

Does the person that states that they believe Unicorns might exist, but on the other hand they might not exist lack a belief in Unicorns?

A person that states they believe in the possibility of Unicorns does not lack a belief in Unicorns; more specifically the belief in Unicorns they have is that Unicorns may possibly exist, but on the hand they might not.

I thought that might make it easier to understand this way, because I don't know of many people that believe in Unicorns.

Within the acceptable range of cultural teological thinking, stating one believes that unicorns might exist is clearly a measure of belief in Unicorns, and goes beyond culturally acceptable "magical" thinking or beliefs.

If this can be accepted, logically it should be accepted that stating one believes that God might exist is a measure of a belief in God. A measure of a belief in God is not a lack of belief in God.

And since when are incredulous reactions equivalent to science? This is not an argument, it is a deflection. And you also assume that the concept of god is complex. Is it because the concept is complex or that adults make it complex? It is conceivable that the simplicity of god is quite within the grasp of an infants consciousness but only the acquisition of "knowledge" that destroys that simplicity and creates the monstrosity of religion and complexities of theology.

The point is that you claimed that we are all born without belief and therefor all atheists. There is no evidence of this being the case and in fact it cannot even be addressed scientifically so as to produce such evidence. Your claim that we are all born atheist is on the same foundation as the resurrection of Christ. It is a belief.



You are good at telling what an infant cannot conceptualize. But everything you add to your list is a complex description. So what? Because I cannot describe something without complex abstractions this does not mean I cannot perceive it. If god exists and can be perceived there is nothing that would prevent that perception sans complex descriptions. You are conflating description with perception. Clearly, an infant cannot describe. But they can certainly perceive. And until you can determine how to map an infants perceptions and experience onto the complex descriptions of adults, you have only supposition.





You are sloppy with your words. In these discussions, precision is paramount. It seems that you should pay attention as well.

And your disdain is showing.



Which is precisely the point. Atheism is a form of belief. The bobbing and weaving around definitions like "the absence of god belief" is vacuous mental masturbation.



Now you're just being a dick.

Did I say we all have the same beliefs? No. Time for you to pay attention. I said we all have belief. Some believe in God. Some believe that those that believe in God are delusional. Some believe that they can actually be without belief. Apparently, someone believes in a Blargamorphic Gorgleplaft.

Here is a question. Where in this thread have I indicated whether I am an atheist or theist? I'm willing to bet you have made an assumption about that. I'm wondering if you can see that nothing I have said is relevant to my own personal position on that. But I'm betting you can't.

Why is your blood pressure going up? Surely your embrace of rationalism precludes such an emotional response.

First, good job changing the subject instead of replying to what I said.

Second, we all have emotions, and we all have flaws, and one of mine is that people piss me off when they refuse to accept what the goddamned dictionary says.

Now that I've replied to what you've said, it's your turn.

I find religion is a package of 'Gods' that all replicate each other throughout some spiritual belief or another. The belief that there will be something to save us at death; the believe that an omnipresent being is among us. However, I find a lot of it to be a bit of a folly, because what God would induce more tsunamis after it's been said in the bible that there will be no tsunamis at the end of times. In other words, it contradicts each other and relapses idea by idea. I also feel that religion is what creates a schism between two groups of people, creating war that induces the darkest art to come into play; the finality of life because one belief has more substance than another. I wouldn't consider myself an Atheist, though, as I feel there could be something above our power, a deity made out of energy that can be portrayed throughout a metaphysical concept, or at least a formula to tell such. I truly believe in the Nihilistic viewpoint that religion is pointless if it isn't evil and can only do harm unto our 'useless' existences, while we cry. Furthermore, I researched an idea about 'malthusian' which is the notion of a group of persons succeeding an alignment of subsistence, due to that war that a God would have stopped or the treachery. And look what we have now, babies being killed in China for now having enough space with an over-populous area of 1.3 billion people..

Right there is where you misunderstand me. When I say a baby is an atheist, that does not mean the baby is a physicalist/materialist. Physicalism/materialism is an active philosophical stance. A newborn baby doesn't have an active philosophical stance. When I say a newborn is an atheist, I'm talking about passive atheism, not materialism. As I have stated several times. Passive atheism doesn't imply materialism or any other active stance on any issue. You can be a passive atheist and still believe in faeries and ghosts, as I have also mentioned earlier. Hell, you can even be an active atheist without being a materialist, and many people are. But not at birth, obviously.

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It's not disdain, it's exhaustion. I've been very precise, and I've repeated and reworded my definitions over and over again, and still you get hung up on the nth rewording where I left one detail implied, which I had mentioned several times earlier. Hence the aforementioned exhaustion.


No. The fact that one can be an atheist and also hold beliefs, doesn't mean that atheism is necessarily a belief.
Active atheism is a belief, the positive assertion that there is no god, but it is not the only form of atheism.
Passive atheism, the most basic form of atheism, is not a belief, it's simply the state of not being a theist. This includes being completely unaware or apathetic about the whole issue. And stop pretending that this isn't a correct definition. Most dictionaries I've looked up the word Atheism in list this (only worded differently) as the first of two or more definitions. The second definition often being the previously mentioned active belief variant.


No, it's simple semantics and the very basic definition of the word atheism.


I didn't say, nor did I imply, that you said we all have the same beliefs. However, my point was that if the default state of mind in any context is to believe, then we would all believe absolutely everything before even hearing about it, observing it or even imagining it. That's what default means in this context. The position you have toward any concept before having any awareness of it. Lack of belief. Also lack of wanting to eat it and lack of sexual attraction to it. Lack of every reaction, really. Because they're reactions. Reactions kind of happen after things enter your mind, not before.


I don't gamble.
I've made no assumption about your personal beliefs, nor do I have any interest in doing so. I find it irrelevant to the discussion. Where in this thread have I indicated that I presume to know whether or not you believe in God? You could be a militant antitheist or the Pope himself and it still wouldn't change the definition of the word "atheism" to exclude passive lack of belief in gods.

I don't like to call myself superior to anything. I've been deep in both Christianity and Atheism (the former mostly) and I just come to find myself no longer caring for the faith vs fact debate or to be on one particular side of the argument. In a way I kinda have the WP forums on here to thank for that, somewhat. I have my mood swings where some days I do feel a 'lil more religious and other days where I'm a 'lil more atheist and days when I'm agnostic. I have my paranoias about the afterlife vs not having an afterlife. And I think the idea of no longer existing AND the idea of going to another world after death both kinda suck if you understood my thinking.

All of this doesn't really put me in any particular group and I've come to the realization that I really wouldn't want to anyhow. Life's too short to devote so much time and energy to debating the origins and purpose of our existence anyhow.

But, you do have to admit, it's great fun when you have nothing else to do!

I don't know if most aspies are atheists/non-theists, but I am an atheist. I didn't really "decide" that I was an atheist. I can't help it if I need substantial evidence to support the existence of a deity. I was brought up as a roman catholic, but over the years I realized how much the bible made very little sense when compared to what we know about science, ethics and just human nature as a whole. If i want to leanr about the origin of the universe, I turn to science, not religion.

Is that a concise enough answer?

That's not technically agnosticism. An atheist can have that belief as well. Atheism doesn't require dogma. I would be very willing to accept any scientific evidence for the existence of a deity if any popped up. I would cease to be an atheist if I saw irrefutable evidence for the existence of a god. But seeing as we have no reason to think that there is a God, I take the stance of "well then there probably isn't one in my opinion".

Y'know, it's the same as how I know that leprechauns don't exist.

But seeing as you believe that you can never know that there is truly a God, I guess that means you are an agnostic.

I'm not an atheist. I am a firm believer in God. Right now I do not attend worship services, nor do I even really no which religion I am anymore. I was a strong Christian, but now I am just certain that I believe in God. From there, who knows? I would like to return to worship services soon, but I find it very difficult due to my inability to communicate with all the people that approach me there.

I am an Atheist and if I think about people I know the Atheism ratio is higher among Aspies than NTs. But then I know Aspies who are strong believers.

I wonder if there is a reason or at least any official statistic.

Right now, I'm agnostic. I'm not sure, and have no way of knowing that god exists (definition of agnosticism), but if he does, he must be more cruel than all the bullies I had put together. My life that been nothing but misery ever since I was old enough to be self-aware. I tried to confide in to people, and told me I was just a whiner when I was little, and that god has a plan for me when I was older. If that's the case, and god's plan for me is a life of misery, plus setting it up in such a way that no one believes me, then it only proves my belief that god is very cruel. And no god at all is better than a cruel god. Hence, my agnosticism.

By the way, I cycled through various stages of religiousness. From a staunch atheism for most of my childhood and adolescence ("miserable" was my first multisyllable word, with 'R' mispronounced), to slight belief in Christianity while attending a Catholic university, to a three-year stint with Judaism after traveling to Israel, to a complete loss of faith after losing a tooth after a long struggle to save it and working at a job where I burned out faster than spilled gasoline. I'm still an agnostic with little or no belief on god, and will need to see a highly drastic improvement in my life before I will even consider becoming religious again.

No. Agnostic. Certain things are simply far too coincidential to have happened without help.

Just my belief though.

I'm not Christian however, as I have a very hard time with the idea that a being described as "loving" would send people to a place of great pain and suffering for all eternity simply for disobedience.

As for other religions, I am mostly unaware of most. Buddhism is quite attractive though.