Autistic people less likely to be religious?

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Ai_Ling
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01 Jul 2011, 2:58 pm

http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blog ... nism/?p=50

I found this interesting. It seems that religious experience's link from a persons "theory of mind" which is something that is lacking or weak for those on the spectrum. This certainly does not apply to all people on the spectrum so please dont get offended if your heavily religious. I'm just proposing a hypothesis that people on the spectrum are less likely then NTs to be religious because we lack theory of mind. But it doesnt mean we cant be religious/spiritual, were all wired differently. Remember no 2 autistic people are alike.



Philologos
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01 Jul 2011, 7:09 pm

Any work along these lines is going to depend heavily on the definition of "religious".

"Religious" people range from hermits who talk to just about nobody but God to people who dance ecstatically to people who run megachurches. How big is "theory of mind" in the hermit life? You cannot really put John the Dwarf and Billy Graham in the same basket.