Atheism is a form of Autism!

[Cyberman]

I just 'shopped a picture of "Brain Cox" but it's too obscene to post here.

Instead, you'll have to make do with the wit and wisdom of NephilimFree on the subject:

[Doubting Thomas]

He aut to be ashamed of his stupidity.

[Mystical]

There was a program with Brain Cox that went into the connection between science and autism. They didn't mention atheism but then atheism is the same thing as science. Or so they think.

[Jackalope]

Once at the first atheist site I hung out at someone posted a link to a quiz for Asperger's (an autism spectrum disorder) and a lot of the atheists were in or leaning toward the Asperger's range, and I saw it repeated at another atheist site. This of course isn't enough to draw a conclusion but it raises questions.

No, it isn't enough to draw a conclusion, of course. Neither is this - my son has Asperger's and is a Christian (he didn't catch it from me, obviously).

[Mystical]

I wouldn't be surprised if I were autistic to some degree. I hate being around stupid people. And I like to wander. I'm blonde, and my farts smell like freshly squeezed oranges. Oh and the whole faith thing. I have faith in tangible matters or demonstrably reliable processes. Like pizza. I have faith in pizza.

[IAmNotHere]

Faith part of the brain? Say what now? Did I miss something.

My brother has autism and for a while didnt acknowledge the existence of god (even though he was attending a christian school) but now speaks of god as though it is fact.

[Mystical]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...=110997741

"Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a book entitled, “How God Changes Your Brain” has been scanning the brains of religious people for more than ten years. Newberg One of Newberg’s test subjects was Michael Baime, a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Tibetan Buddhist who has meditated at least an hour a day forthe past40 years. Baime told Newberg that during a peak meditative experience, “he feels oneness with the universe, and time slips away.†“It’s as if the present moment expands to fill all of eternity,” he explains, “that there has never been anything but this eternal now.”

While Newberg scanned Baime’s brain, the Buddhist meditated, and his brain mirrored those feelings.As was expected, his frontal lobes lit up on the screen because meditation is sheer concentration. But what Newberg found most interesting was that Baime’s parietal lobes went dark.

“This is an area that normally takes our sensory information, tries to create for us a sense of ourselves, and orient that self in the world,” he explains. “When people lose their sense of self, feel a sense of oneness, a blurring of the boundary between self and other, we have found decreases in activity in that area.”

Newberg achieved the same results with other monks he scanned. Itwas the same when he imaged the brains of Franciscan nuns praying andSikhs chanting. They all felt the same oneness with the universe. When it comes to the brain, Newberg says, spiritual experience is spiritual experience. “There is no Christian, there is noJewish,there is noMuslim, it’s just all one,” Newberg says.



Therefore ALL of them are correct in their god claim, or all of them are experiencing the same physiological process.

[Esquilax]

There was a program with Brain Cox that went into the connection between science and autism. They didn't mention atheism but then atheism is the same thing as science. Or so they think.

I see, so your response to my requests in other threads that you talk to atheists about what they believe is to literally never do that.

Please, Swordy Stabbington, tell us atheists more about what we believe! We're just dying to learn about the things we think from someone who isn't us!

Do you have to strain something, being that stupid? I imagine your brain is slowly eating itself.

[Minimalist]

“How God Changes Your Brain” has been scanning the brains of religious people for more than ten years.

Must have taken that long to find one.

[max-greece]

My brother is autistic and lives in a sheltered community. I have no idea what his belief's are frankly but he's autistic and I'm an atheist. Both my parents are atheists. Neither of them is autistic. Doesn't appear to be too much correlation there.

In the meantime it does appear that autistic people do use their brains very differently from the norm. When high functioning autistic people have been scanned doing normal things (like looking at faces for example) totally different parts of the brain light up than is normally the case. It would appear that autism is, at least in part, a wiring issue.

This might also explain why autistic people are capable of doing remarkable things. I've met a pair of autistic twins that communicate between themselves using prime numbers - big ones - 17 digit prime numbers. No-one knows how they do this and they sure as shit can't explain it.

In my brother's case he is a calendrical savant. Tell him the date - he tells you the day. He can cover about 150 year period as far as I know. Again - no idea how he does it. When you ask him he just "sees it" or he says things like - well - its the same as 1964 or something (which really helps).