Impaired mentalizing, not social isolation, explains atheism among autistics
Evidence
Contrary to this explanation, the effect of autism on belief in God remained strong even after statistically removing the role of religious attendance; neither could general intelligence or IQ, or personality factors linked to autism and religiosity, explain the link. Mentalizing was the key variable that explained the autism-disbelief link. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 882
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- QUESTION: Strong support for the Big God mechanism: belief in God depends on theory-of-mind capacities that mentalize an invisible observer. Worth flagging for the reader’s omniscient-gaze argument.
Related
- Autism-linked mentalizing deficits reduce belief in a personal God (similarity 0.91)
- Autistic deficits in mentalizing predict higher rates of religious disbelief. (similarity 0.88)
- People with autism have more difficulty perceiving minds and believing in gods (similarity 0.88)
- Lower mentalizing ability erodes belief in a personal God. (similarity 0.88)
- Mentalizing capacities are cognitive foundations for belief in God (similarity 0.86)
- Reduced mentalizing capacity directly lowers belief in God (similarity 0.84)
- Mentalizing deficits are only one contributing factor to religious disbelief. (similarity 0.81)
- Autistic religiosity lacks an interpersonal relationship with a communicating God (similarity 0.81)
- Religious belief depends on mentalizing skills that imagine God’s mental states. (similarity 0.80)
- Atheists’ unresponsiveness to God primes rules out ideomotor explanations (similarity 0.79)
- Mentalizing enables believers to interact with and be policed by gods (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Mind-reading capacity supplies the cognitive basis for belief in disembodied gods
#complicates(0.72) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 71