Who's wrong?

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In Tony Attwood's The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, he makes a very insightful observation that has some interesting implications. In the chapter on Theory of Mind, he says:

I refuse to believe that NTs have these psychic abilities that autism researchers ascribe to them. I have almost never observed any NT making an accurate assessment of anyone else's mental state, emotions, or motivations.

They do tend to anthropomorphize, though.

A few decades of observation covince me that, yes, different peiople weight incoming data differently.

Yes, there are those with the amazing ability to amaze me by picking up social cues from their own kind - amazing.

But I have often amazed them ny picking up social cuers of my kind where they see nothing. Amazing.

The pulupok has keen vision. Put it in a totally dark environment , or one willed with dazzlingly bright and shifting lights, and it is lost.

The cave gubi uses echolocation. Put it in a maximally noisy rioom, or one that absorbs or cancels all sound in its range, and it is lost.

Floptu track their prey and find their way back to their lairs by scent. Put them in a chemical factory or a diving suit designed for floptu and they are in trouble.

Different senses or sensitivities and differences in processing do not - alone - add up to superpowers or handicap - until one goes to Krypton or lands on earth and has to operate in the other's environment.

I guess I wasn't too clear about the point of my OP... I'm not so much interested in the differing skillsets of NTs and Aspies. I found it interesting more because it hints at the fact that our ideas of God are informed by how we process information.

The prioritization of social information, resulting in anthropomorphic interpretations of natural events, could be the source of mythologies involving personal Gods. On the other side of the coin, we have agnostics and pantheists (I don't believe in atheists) who think the idea is a bit far fetched because they don't have the tendency to process information in a social context.

It is a neat hypothesis - I did get that as part of your post - and may even work in some segments of the population, but with a larger sampling we see it cannot apply acfross the board.

I have very little ability to pick up the famous socioemotive cues in interaction with the majority - and I am handicapped transmitting signals they can pick up on. I am fair to middling with the relastively few of my own kind I meet.

As a social isolate I was an atheist, seeing no evidence supporting godthought.

I became a believer / godthinker when I came across enough supporting evidence - and remained and remain a social isolate, missing cues and talking funny.

I think it MAY be correct to say that some adopt positions because of socioemotive cues, tending toward groupthink. But I have known highly socialized people who were - for that or some other reason - strong atheists.

Tghe tendency to adopt - maybe. But WHAT is adopted will depend on what the Mob is into.

Think you're onto something there-
god being the ultimate anthropomorphization, that of the unknown.

The way I see it, this whole theory of mind thing is nothing more than a projection of yourself onto the person. You wouldn't be able to relate unless you've been through the same thing or share some thoughts or ways of thinking. So this stuff about NT's having a 6th sense is BS. Of course you're not gonna be able to have a theory of mind when it comes to someone who is wired differently, cuz it's nothing more than projection.

You don't ever, ever put what who said on doubt, not even on a question, mister!

Um, try reading the Attwood excerpt again, people. There's no allegation there that NTs have any "psychic power" or "sixth sense" - what they have is the ability to read and interpret (however incorrectly) the subtle shifts of posture, expression, tone of voice, and word choice that make up the poorly-named "body language". (One of the reasons we make them nervous, I think, is that we don't do "body language", unless we've gone to the trouble to learn it. It comes naturally to most of them.) It's not an "extra sense" they have - it's a means of interpreting data that we generally don't. (You'll notice I've used words like "most" and "generally" here - there are always exceptions, as humanity is almost infinitely variable. Some aspies do "get" body language - but most don't.)

I have no idea how one can prove or disprove anything regarding supernatural entities, as by definition they exist at least in part beyond nature, and thus cannot be properly observed. I know what I believe, but I don't begin to pretend I can prove it.

Well, the issue though is that even though I think that people with AS can do as well, or better, in the abstract in identifying intentions. I don't think that we have the ability in practice, to the same extent. NTs are more likely to swim in a social context that relies on the interpretation of social data, while people with AS do a lot more flopping around, because we're more likely to fumble during the game when we don't have the time to do the analytics, but instead have to use the instinctual methods.