Ability to mentalise and belief in God

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Are autistic people 'unable' to believe in God? Ability to think 'inside' other people's heads is key to religious feelings

Most believers think of deity as being who 'thinks'
Austistic adolescents less likely to believe in God
Ability to 'mentalise' - think inside other people's heads is key to belief
Men less able to mentalise than women

Belief in God - or other higher powers - might be linked to a person's ability to imagine what others think and feel. The discovery could mean that people who find it difficult to 'mentalise' - think 'inside' other people's heads, are unable to believe. 'Mentalising' is the capacity to understand what another person is thinking - a crucial aspect in how people handle the social world. Religious believers usually think of their deities as beings who 'think' in a way similar to human beings. People with autistic spectrum disorders have difficulty mentalising. 'Autistic adolescents expressed less belief in God,' say the researchers. The study was based on samples of Canadian studies, and two nationwide samples of the American population. Men also have far more trouble with the social skill.

‘Religious believers intuitively think of their deities as personified beings with mental states who anticipate and respond to human needs and actions. 'Therefore, mentalizing deficits would be expected to make religious belief less intuitive,' say the researchers, from the University of British Columbia. Other factors, such as cultural and psychological factors are also at work - it's not as simple as 'mentalising' being the key to whether someone is a believer or not. According to Will Gervais, who co-led the investigation, ‘Mentalizing deficits are known to be more common in men than women, and in our research this explained the well-known finding that men tend to be less religious than women’.

I think it's hogwash. It looks like the experimental data showed autistics were more likely to be atheists, and then they just ran in inserting all their half-baked suppositions to account for it.

What's "mentalizing" got to do with blowing yourself up in a crowded mall, for example?

Simpler explanation here - impairments with imaginative play would fully account for it, in every way. Fantasizing is impaired, and as the religious freely admit, all the other religions are fantasies (just not their own ... not compatible with the suspension of disbelief that is required).

from the Daily Mail


Does anyone think there is a correlation between their ability to mentalise and whether they believe in God?