People. You cannot use a very silly, poorly defined, done-for-a-hoot internet quiz to make sweeping conclusions about schools of thought. You also can’t just raise up your prejudices and point to them as evidence, as in this case:
Based on Wired Magazine’s observation that atheists tend to be quarrelsome, socially challenged men, to say nothing of the unpleasant personalities of leading public atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Michel Onfray, one could reasonably hypothesize that there is likely to be a strong correlation between Asperger’s and atheism.
Right. So Dawkins has an unpleasant personality, by definition (because of course the kook making this judgment has never actually met Dawkins), and because Dawkins is an atheist, we can therefore conclude that atheism is a pathological personality disorder that afflicts unpleasant men.
You will not be surprised to learn that the clueless twit making this chain of illogic is Vox Day. He’s probably going to argue that ERV has testicles, next.
I am tempted to say that there is a correlation between Asperger’s and subscription to Wired, but I am afraid that would be offensive to people with Asperger’s.
I love clairvoyant, over-the-net diagnoses. Heck, Castro has died five times now, didn’t ya know?
Yep. I’m sure my wife would agree that I have some socially unacceptable habits but Aspergers?
Please.
Yes, I find people who are honest and forthright about themselves to be very unpleasant. Those who hide their greed and agressiveness behind a facade of revealed religion, and then use it to take your money and molest your kids are so, so much more pleasant.
Also, and perhaps I’m misunderstanding this, but isn’t one of the criticism leveled against even the /idea/ of Aspergers is that it defines a personality type? Many people with this syndrome are intelligent and driven, and quite successful in terms of the world, if not in their personal lives. As such, critics say that it’s hard to call something a disorder when those who suffer from it are a step /ahead/ of the average person and not behind.
Anyway, I’m an INTP (please, let’s not get too deep into the reliability of Jungian archetypes), and it’s been said by smarter people than I that the INTP personality type is an earlier branding of Asperger’s Syndrome.
I do think that Asperger’s exists, but I am unwilling to call it a disorder unless the person is suffering from it. If you can hold a job and make good money, but have strained personal relationships, that’s personality. To have trouble holding jobs because you are socially unbearable, that’s disorderly.
and Vox Day has such a pleasant personality himself…
Better Asperger’s than being some sort of desperate creationist.
bullfighter:
Incidentally, I believe the term “the New Atheism” was coined in the pages of Wired, last November.
So Freud had Asperger’s? Who knew? And bitchy rationality is now a mental disorder? If I had to choose, I’d take Asperger’s over the religion illusion any day.
But then, I can’t even imagine being so full of regret about having to grow up that I’d want to cling to an imaginary sky-daddy for the rest of my life. If this is insanity, then I don’t want to be sane!
The one fact that people like Vox Day can’t deal with is that atheists are smarter than most people.
Sometimes being smarter can be equated with being quarrelsome or socially-challenged, but that is usually because smart people get bored very quickly when talking to stupid people about inane subjects. And sometimes they will correct stupid people on their mistakes. Stupid people don’t like this and so, rather than correct their mistakes, will lash out at the smarter person.
This is silly. Richard Dawkins comes across as Mr. Rogers in his niceness. It’s only because we usually give an automatic pass to the religious that he is thought of as mean.
I can’t tell you how many times I have had people regurgitate their religious superstitions on me and when I say something like, “I disagree,” I am looked at as the jerk who wants to pick a fight.
Now Christopher Hitchens, yeah he’s an ass. (and that’s why we love him).
Richard
http://lifewithoutfaith.com
Speaking as a fundamentally happy, female atheist who has a goodly number of people who would own up to being my friends, is in a career that depends on tactful social interaction and communication, and who (for the sake of this argument, though normally self-deprecating) would consider herself both of pleasant looks and personality, I have to heartily disagree with these assumptions. Plus, atheist men, who actually use their brains and are not reactionary sheep, are hot.
Or maybe that’s just the Asperger’s talking.
Turn the tables:
Christianists have extremely unpleasant personalities.
They pray to a fantasy being.
They impose their idiot morality on others.
They willfully ignore reality.
They brainwash their children into their idiot-cult.
They perpetuate gross stupidity.
[Insert other complaints here]
Better Asperger’s than an asshole.
My godson has Asperger’s and his grandmother managed to get him fixated on Jesus when he was eight, so the association of Asperger’s and atheism is totally shot for me.
He also has to have a dedicated classroom aide to assist him just so he can spend two hours a day in school.
But… but Richard Dawkins is an extremely nice man. Just because he chooses confrontational subjects in no way invalidates his basic niceness of personality.
I find myself reminded of this quote from The Tick:
Maybe that’s because people with Asperger’s automatically see right past the emotional/authority appeals to religion and notice that is full of shit otherwise with nothing else to back it up.
But seriously, as both a recent atheist and a mother of an AS child, I say a big fuck you to Vox Day. I’m so upset I can’t be any more articulate than that at the moment.
The Muslim counterparts to Vox Day could argue that Western infidels display “Allah-blindness” towards their deity.
I have mild Asperger’s and have met several other Aspies with varying degrees of the condition. Most of us are actually very pleasant people. I, personally, am not very comfortable in social situations with people I don’t share obvious common interests with. This results in painful silence rather than unpleasant behaviour, though.
I hang out on several programming-related IRC channels, and when I’m called nasty names, it’s usually by clueless lusers who want to know something but have no interest in learning or re-evaluting their broken assumptions. I don’t see why it should be any different anywhere else.
I can’t really hold that against him. After all, I’ve never met Vox Day, and I have no problem concluding that he’s a huge douchebag.
There is AS then there is the so called “functional AS”. The former is a real condition, which often leaves the person unable to function in any real sense with other people. The later… May or may not be real, but sure as hell you can’t use an internet poll from Wired to assess it. Got to remember that The Tick quote though. lol
I don’t suppose it ever cross Vox fantasy addled mind that by being an aggressive prick of Christian he is bring the aggressive prick out in any atheist he meets. I mean come on, people don’t go around talking about their religion in real life causally, the only reason he would find out about it is if he’s deliberate mouthing off about it.
I’ll bet a lot of those “Atheists” he meet were just claiming to atheists just to annoy him.
Asperger’s is a serious condition that requires a real psychiatrist to make a qualified diagnosis. Doing it over the internet in a quiz format does nothing but further stigmatize people with the condition as being nothing more than antisocial assholes, which in my experience (my son has it) has been primarily the affliction of people who don’t have Asperger’s. Like Vox Day. Antisocial asshole.
and it’s been said by smarter people than I that the INTP personality type is an earlier branding of Asperger’s Syndrome.
I work in an environment in which Meyers-Briggs personality typing is taken reasonably seriously, in the contexts of learning styles and professional specialities (not that I necessarily agree with this, but then I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist). Asperger’s Syndrome is defined by several criteria, including difficulties with reciprocal and non-verbal social communication, odd speech patterns and inflection with normal grammar, and eccentric, narrow, and often obsessive interests. I’m unquestionably an INTP (in that not one of the 4 categories was borderline), but I have none of the characteristics of AS that I just listed. I’m sure the same can be said for the majority of INTPs.
I think that a lot of the criticism of Meyers-Briggs arises from its (incorrect) application to limit and criticize people (e.g. INTPs have a pervasive developmental disorder).
I feel it must be pointed out that the Autism Spectrum Quotient is designed by UK autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen, and there is at least one study on its usefulness as a clinical diagnostic tool. Just because someone’s put it up on the web doesn’t necessarily mean it’s “very silly”, “poorly defined”, or “done for a hoot”.
That said, it is not a self-diagnostic tool and I agree that one should not make sweeping generalizations based on the results it provides. Individuals who obtain high scores should get professional advice if they are concerned with their results.
Let me see if I understand what the ubergenius Day (any relation to Stockwell or Doris, btw?) is telling us. People who he meets who are atheists are mean to him because they have some sort of a neurobiological disorder, not because he’s an asshole who probably brings out the worst in his mother and his dog. The fact that he and his followers talk to imaginary people and sometimes hear those imaginary people talking to them doesn’t indicate some sort of problem? The doctors treating my aunt would call that “schizophrenia”.
Jerith: I’m in roughly the same situation as you. I didn’t know what it was called until I discussed it with my therapist a couple of years ago. At least I now know that part of me isn’t due to being crazy.
Kagehi: If you think highly functional AS isn’t real its because you don’t have to live with it. Thank the luck of your biochemistry that you don’t. Its not pleasant being an ‘alien’ which, for practical purposes, is what its like.
And really, I don’t know of any atheists as unpleasant as Pat Robertson and the other leaders of the religious reich.
any relation to Stockwell or Doris, btw?
Aren’t they the same person?
Oh, of course – but there are many so-called “symptoms” of Aspergers, so picking several that you don’t have isn’t terribly useful. Trust me, I was in no way trying to say that INTP==Asperger’s. Rather, I was saying that there is a community of people who do, and a community that criticizes this community as failing to see the difference between, as another poster said, real Asperger’s and functional Asperger’s.
I don’t [think I] have Asperger’s syndrome, but if a lay person were to read the list of symptoms and compare to my behavior and personality, they may be inclined to guess as much. The problem is a matter of degree in the definitions of the symptoms, like having “eccentric, narrow, and often obsessive” interests. We can understand that a real psychologist may only make a diagnosis in an extreme circumstance, but the average person who reads that may envision the nerd up the street who plays D&D all day on Saturdays.
This disorder has perception problems, much in the same way as schizophrenia and MPD. And like attention deficit disorders, we may see rampant over diagnosis of this as publicity for it ramps up, and usage of the label becomes casual as in this article about Richard Dawkins.
So I think we agree. :)
Ted aka Vox aka “The Voice of God” is one of those nincompoops who mistakes his ability to string words together in a superficially meaningful way with vast intelligence. Oops, I meant with “raw intellect”. Whatever. His debate with Scott betrays his oft-demonstrated tendency towards indulging in a particular brand of arrogance that has one foot firmly planted in his ignorance of the very subject he holds in such confident distain.
Vox once again proves the truth of H.L. Mencken’s words:
“God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.”
Hey Vox Day, if you’re reading this…
Can you say, Ad Hominem?
First, you should justify why religious belief is a normal phenomenon that results from development, before you can classify not having that belief as a dis-order.
Aren’t you the guy who tends to blame rape victims for what happens to them – a sign of being an unpleasant man. Let’s make up a personality disorder for you!
Well, i’d actually agree that religious belief is a normal phenomeon but that says absolutely nothing about it being a) true or b) good.
I love the idea of anti-semitic, misogynist, role-playing, flaming sword wielding science fiction writer Vox Day calling anyone else “socially challenged”.
i do know how to spell “phenomenon”.
But i also wanted to add, where to people who’ve converted from one to the other (which is probably most people) fit in to this little theory of his?
First off, my son actually does have Asperger’s and he’s a total sweetheart and Jeebus would be lucky to get followers like him instead of asswipes like, oh, James Dobson let’s say, but my son likes secular philosophers like Hobbes instead.
And second, my personality is exactly the same now as an atheist as it was as an evangelical and I defy anyone to demonstrate otherwise. As a Christian I was plenty quarrelsome with people of other and no faiths, and now I am polite and even generous with everyone I can be. For example, I shall turn a butt cheek for Vox smoochies, praise the lord.
Yeah, but they’re fun. Just like horoscopes.
One could also reasonably hypothesize that there is likely to be a correlation between schizotypals and religion – and find that there is evidence suggesting so:
[I haven’t read that one, so can’t comment on its quality. But there seems to be more such papers, if anyone wants to pursue this subject further.]
And of course, readers of Pharyngula knows that Robert Sapolsky hypothesize that religion is founded by schizotypal shamanism and ritually embellished by OCD persons that evolved to fit into society.
One could also reasonably hypothesize that there is likely to be a correlation between schizotypals and religion – and find that there is evidence suggesting so:
[I haven’t read that one, so can’t comment on its quality. But there seems to be more such papers, if anyone wants to pursue this subject further.]
And of course, readers of Pharyngula knows that Robert Sapolsky hypothesize that religion is founded by schizotypal shamanism and ritually embellished by OCD persons that evolved to fit into society.
So more than 50% of New Zealanders are argumentative, socially-inept men with Aspergers? Not to mention all those millions of unbelieving Scandinavians, Australians, Britons and Canadians. How is it that I never noticed this epidemic?
It’s strange that although I scored 35 on that Asperger test that I’m going to play devil’s advocate and be sympathetic to VOX.
No, on-an-hoot and informal internet tests are *not* a source of conclussive data or evidence. But then again a blog expressing ones general opinion and casual observations isn’t scientific journal either.
It seems to me pretty natural and reasonable to look at some anectdotal observance with a bias I and come up with a personal pet hypothisis. I look at many ofthe storefronts of the New Age and Spiritual Bookstore and make a pet hypothesis that New-Agers miss their bed-time stories. Robert Bly looks at the utter falsehoods that the Reagan spouted (95% of pollution comes from trees) and the public’s acceptance (“There you go, again” Applause) and concludes Reagan and the country are, in the pop-psych terminology, “in denial”. We observe most gun-nuts are bible-thumpers and we conclude… well, i dunno, we conclude something.
All these need to be taken with a grain of salt as the rigorless casual observations, pet hypothesis, or humorous analogies that they are.
Of course, once stating them anyone is entitled to come up and start debating them. If one wishes these pet anecdotal hypothesis to stand up to criticism one will have to start finding firmer evidence. Or give them up. Or delegate them to the role of “personal joke”.
It’s strange that although I scored 35 on that Asperger test that I’m going to play devil’s advocate and be sympathetic to VOX.
No, on-an-hoot and informal internet tests are *not* a source of conclussive data or evidence. But then again a blog expressing ones general opinion and casual observations isn’t scientific journal either.
It seems to me pretty natural and reasonable to look at some anectdotal observance with a bias I and come up with a personal pet hypothisis. I look at many ofthe storefronts of the New Age and Spiritual Bookstore and make a pet hypothesis that New-Agers miss their bed-time stories. Robert Bly looks at the utter falsehoods that the Reagan spouted (95% of pollution comes from trees) and the public’s acceptance (“There you go, again” Applause) and concludes Reagan and the country are, in the pop-psych terminology, “in denial”. We observe most gun-nuts are bible-thumpers and we conclude… well, i dunno, we conclude something.
All these need to be taken with a grain of salt as the rigorless casual observations, pet hypothesis, or humorous analogies that they are.
Of course, once stating them anyone is entitled to come up and start debating them. If one wishes these pet anecdotal hypothesis to stand up to criticism one will have to start finding firmer evidence. Or give them up. Or delegate them to the role of “personal joke”.
Superstitions are universal among all cultures — and yet there appear to be some people who are unable to be superstitious. I wonder which mental disorder they suffer from? (We can probably rule out Obsessive-Compulsive).
Um, so what *is* Asperger? “obsessive attention to detail, social awkwardness, and some difficulty relating to other people” doesn’t really sound like a serious disorder to me.
I scored 35!!!! on the quiz!
I think I was biasedly answering many of the questions. When I take these quizez I want to be an extreme because I want to believe I’m unique (just like everybody else).
Some were hard to answer such as “I’d be a good diplomat”.
Well, I hate conflict. I always bend over backwords to see the other side. I consider being objective to be the single most important and honorable virtue. I’m exceedingly well liked and tactfull and empathetic to nearly all points of view.
BUT then, I’m a push-over. I get utterly stymied and fall apart when I run across a train of thought I don’t understand. I can’t settle for compromise unless all viewpoints are completely understood by all parties. I can’t stand being misunderstood and will fly into fury and flurry when I’m not.
And I’m totally oblivious to inter-personal politics.
Actually the hardest question was “I prefer to do things the same way over and over again”.
Definately! I love to view things logically and systematically and checking things off case by case and reducing things to the perfect argument. I do crosswords and sudoku puzzles very slowly because I’m as interested in observing my process and evalutating the efficiencies of specific strategies. When doing laundary I find the task terrorfying and overwhelming unless I play games of placing the laundary in consecuative driers all timed to need more quarters in a line.
Definately not! There’s nothing I hate more than a routine task. The thought of a daily routine or a 9-5 job fills me with the dread of a life sentence. I can’t stand repetition and acceptance. I lost the love of my life once because … well, she’d always say “Shouldn’t you put something on” on just *couldn’t* hear the same phrase one more time so I said… well, just to be different I said something rather ill-thought out. Oops.
Actually, I guess both of those imply rather strong Asperger leanings…
Um, so what *is* Asperger? “obsessive attention to detail, social awkwardness, and some difficulty relating to other people” doesn’t really sound like a serious disorder to me.
I scored 35!!!! on the quiz!
I think I was biasedly answering many of the questions. When I take these quizez I want to be an extreme because I want to believe I’m unique (just like everybody else).
Some were hard to answer such as “I’d be a good diplomat”.
Well, I hate conflict. I always bend over backwords to see the other side. I consider being objective to be the single most important and honorable virtue. I’m exceedingly well liked and tactfull and empathetic to nearly all points of view.
BUT then, I’m a push-over. I get utterly stymied and fall apart when I run across a train of thought I don’t understand. I can’t settle for compromise unless all viewpoints are completely understood by all parties. I can’t stand being misunderstood and will fly into fury and flurry when I’m not.
And I’m totally oblivious to inter-personal politics.
Actually the hardest question was “I prefer to do things the same way over and over again”.
Definately! I love to view things logically and systematically and checking things off case by case and reducing things to the perfect argument. I do crosswords and sudoku puzzles very slowly because I’m as interested in observing my process and evalutating the efficiencies of specific strategies. When doing laundary I find the task terrorfying and overwhelming unless I play games of placing the laundary in consecuative driers all timed to need more quarters in a line.
Definately not! There’s nothing I hate more than a routine task. The thought of a daily routine or a 9-5 job fills me with the dread of a life sentence. I can’t stand repetition and acceptance. I lost the love of my life once because … well, she’d always say “Shouldn’t you put something on” on just *couldn’t* hear the same phrase one more time so I said… well, just to be different I said something rather ill-thought out. Oops.
Actually, I guess both of those imply rather strong Asperger leanings…
Do you think there are people incapable of being superstitious?
I’m not sure that there are. People are varying in degree in which logic is determinate in their beliefs from those who will not be persuaded by logic to those who can not accept anything without some logical reason. (The later are invariably utterly confounded by the former.)
But I think everyone is capable of being superstitious. The folks on the heavy logic side will simply need a good reason. (Lest you say superstition by definition can not ever have a good reason, I’ll agree that superstion by definition can not stand the rigor of analysis but to get to the rigor of analysis one must have a reason to doubt it in the first place. I’m “superstitious” that the earth is round because 1) sources I trust have told me so and 2) I’ve done the simple tests of comparing the view at different spots on the earth and accepted it seems reasonable. I could do further test if I *really* needed to confirm it but for now my reasons seem good enough.)
I found Dawkins and his wife to be charming, actually.
Hitchens…well, as a southern lady, I’ll decline to comment :)
bug: Did you meet both of them in person?
Somehow, I completely doubt that Vox Day or any editor of Wired has read Michel Onfray, and if he/they did he/they missed the entire point of Onfray’s position. But alas, we can only expect so much from child-like minds.
Took the test two times each time answering the questions honestly.
First time I might have been somewhat biased toward expressing the nerdy side of me. I scored 35.
Second time I deliberately answered biased toward the social side of me. I scored 26.
Yes, Do *not* take these tests seriously. Though they are fun!
Hmm, my casual observation (with the same level of rigor as VOX), would be folks with Asperger despite whatever mental or social shortcoming or disorders they may have do tend to be pretty darned *smart*. Most, although not all, athiests tend to get that way because they are skeptical. All skeptical people question things. All smart people question things. Questioning things doesn’t mean one is smart but questioning things tends to make one smarter rather than keeping one at a current leval. Thus it seems reasonable that there be in *indirect* correlation between Asperger, Intelligence, and Atheism.
I can live with that. I like smart people and Asperger from all I can make out on the cited sites are people who are simply *too* smart for their own good. I’d be proud to be in their company.
34 on the quiz.
I’ve been frequenting some Asperger’s chat rooms lately, and I would say that there probably is a correlation: AS people tend to be overly logical and unsentimental, not easily swayed by emotional arguments such as ‘but Jesus looooves you! How can you be so cruel as to not love him back?’
I suspect that a higher proportion of people self-identifying and/or diagnosed with AS are atheist than in the general population. That, of course, says nothing about the goodnes, or lack therof, of either trait.
The AS exceptions tend to be quite fixated on their religion, whatever it is.
I’ve met Dawkins and Hitchins in person, and they are both polite and charming. Very much so. In one of his interviews, Hitchins complains that he’s always having nice middle-aged women coming up to him at book-signings and telling him how surprisingly nice he is. He pretended not to like that, but I’m a nice middle-aged woman, and at every convention I’ve seen him he was nice to me, too. So there you go.
woozy: my post was meant to be ironic — I think we have an evolved tendency towards superstitious thinking which most people can, with some difficulty, completely think their way out of given a cultural environment which encourages critical thinking. I’d include religion in with that. I think most everyone is capable of becoming both religious and superstitious, if they develop in circumstances where poor mental habits and anecdotes as data are strongly reinforced.
What I think is funny is looking at the non-religious as necessarily suffering from some sort of mental disorder (and I’d say the same given the same sort of blanket diagnosis of the religious). The silliness just becomes clearer when you frame the issue as “superstition” instead of believing in God or not.
Speaking of Vox, he also argued here that he felt justified in rejecting ‘macroevolution’ as science for the same reason that he rejected Keynesian economic theory: unacceptable margins of error.
My response to this argument can be found here. I invite readers to leave a comment, as this is part of a series of posts where Vox and I grapple with each other’s views.
Various studies have all concluded that religious people in general tend to be happier, live longer, stay married, etc. than Atheists or agnostics. Google the results yourself if you like.
Evolution (in the sense that we all came from slime) is a bankrupt theory and certainly not a science. To me, it actually takes a higher act of faith to believe that we got here accidentally than it does to believe that an intelligent force beyond our comprehension designed us. Unwavering belief in evolution therefore becomes a religion without a specific deity to worship.
You will not be surprised to learn that the clueless twit making this chain of illogic is Vox Day. He’s probably going to argue that ERV has testicles, next. – PZ
Oh, I think one need not travel from this blog for such testicular discussion.
Greg:
Oh, of course – but there are many so-called “symptoms” of Aspergers, so picking several that you don’t have isn’t terribly useful.
The symptoms that I chose are at the mild end of the categories that define Autism Spectrum Disorder: impaired social interaction, abnormal or absent language, and repetitive, stereotyped behavior patterns. Same characteristics whether the ASD arises de novo, or whether it is part of another neurodevelopmental disorder, such as Down Syndrome, Rett Syndrome, Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, Prader-Willi, etc. Sure, there are other traits, such as sensitivity to environmental stimuli and physical clumsiness, but they’re often diagnostically controversial, and not as definitive as the three I mentioned.
And like attention deficit disorders, we may see rampant over diagnosis of this as publicity for it ramps up, and usage of the label becomes casual as in this article about Richard Dawkins.
So I think we agree. :)
Completely agreed-in fact I was going to write “Asperger’s is the new ADHD”, but decided that was maybe flippant or insensitive. Though reading back and seeing how many posters appear to be proud of or pleased with Asperger’s-like traits….
When parents start seeking diagnoses of Asperger’s for their kids, such that extra time for exams or special test-taking environments can be gained, then *I’ll* start to rock back and forth and scream like a banshee on crack. Parents of medical school applicants already seek (and gain) learning disorder diagnoses for their offspring. (!) Kids with genuine neurodevelopmental disorders absolutely deserve therapies and education…however, genuine neurodevelopmental disorders also come with genuine limitations on how much “reasonable accommodation” can be made, before one has to concede that “this kid can never be an orthopedic surgeon, or a scientist, or a veterinarian, or a [insert career that requires higher education and communication skills here]”.
I’m not sure whether Meyers-Briggs = Woo; I could probably be convinced either way, though I’m leaning towards Not Woo because of my colleagues. However, use of Meyers-Briggs to indicate latent neurodevelopmental disorders would be a Woo application, IMO. A WooApp.
My mother, who is definitely not an atheist (poor woman), always comments on what a “nice man” Richard Dawkins seems to be when she sees him on TV. But maybe she’s just blinded by his charming British accent and mild manner.
“He’s probably going to argue that ERV has testicles, next.”
No no, he and his parade of sycophants are just going to call her a hysterical bitch, and then whine about how nasty and impolite the people he insults are to him.
Figured I had better take the test-scored a whopping 10. I should be driven out of geekademia in Great Disgrace, I guess. I’m a bit surprised, since I don’t like parties, I abhor social chit-chat, I prefer museums to theaters, and I answered accordingly. I’m reasonably competent at math, but numbers and strings of information hold no fascination for me. I never forget a face, nor the markings on a dog or horse, but I routinely forget my own cell phone number, and those of my friends and family members. Ooops.
I’m not so sure that lack of imagination correlates with Asperger’s or any ASD tendencies, however (as was implied in the scoring description, which I can’t get to pop back up without retaking the test). For a person with ASD who has limited or no language, how do we know what goes on in his or her brain? He or she could have a very rich imagination and “internal life”, and we simply can’t access or understand or relate to it at this point (not that I think that such things are forever unknowable).
As a (possibly irrelevant) aside, I’ve worked with several kids with ASD (all with no discernable language) in a limited capacity, through therapeutic horseback riding programs. I definitely prefer their company to that of any hypoChristian blowhard.
What I find very amusing about this supposed correlation, is that out of the couple dozen or so adults with autism that I have come across, most of them, if not all, have some sort of religious inclinations. Of course, all of the autistics I read or know, are also very intelligent, but that doesn’t stop some of them from having some profoundly interesting religious beliefs.
I’m kind of surprised no one has had a nibble at the argument-bait that Difster has left for us yet. Perhaps I’m a masochist – I can’t resist. Atheists and agnostics have a significantly lower divorce rate than Christians:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
I’m buggered if I know what happened to my earlier comment, but anyway: 23.
Incidentally, I’ve met Michel Onfray … I couldn’t really communicate with him, since his English isn’t that great and my French is even worse, but from his demeanour, interaction with others, attitude when he signed my copy of the The Atheist Manifesto, he seemed like a real sweetie. That’s not a lot to go on, of course, but I was in a small room with him and not that many others for some time, so I have more basis to judge him on that Vox Day does.
How the fuck do these people make judgments about the personalities of other people whom they don’t know from a bar of goddamn soap?
Haha, I’m an atheist with Asperger’s Syndrome. Do I win or something?
I don’t suppose it ever cross Vox fantasy addled mind that by being an aggressive prick of Christian he is bring the aggressive prick out in any atheist he meets.
ding.
It’s the same pattern as people who have unbroken strings of relationships which (although each appears at first to be Completely Different This Time) turn out in the end to be not just evil but evil in exactly the same way as every one of their predecessors.
Hell, I’m religious and I’ve wanted to smack him back every time I’ve ever read him.
I think perhaps comparing himself to his dad has made the ability to reason a bit of a hot button for our boy.
I need not consult your various uncited studies to say that I prefer to face reality and risk not being as happy or living as long if the price of those things is mental illness.
Your statements about evolution betray an air of confidence in spite of ignorance that fails to inspire further comment.
As an autistic atheist, I don’t recent any association between the two, but I do not particularly like the argument involving “pathological personality defect.” It should first be demonstrated that it is one, on the whole, without using preconceived arbitrary notions of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable interests, skills, mannerisms of behavior and so forth.
I don’t doubt that there could be an association. Unusual ways of looking at the world would probably tend to overlap.
Argh. As another autistic atheist, I’m enraged to see another portrayal of Asperger’s as anything like careless arrogant asshole-ness. Yes, I tend to be loud and transgressive, but that’s not against anyone. I simply can’t understand why should I pretend to agree when I clearly don’t.
BTW, the quiz is taken from Baron-Cohen’s book the Essential Difference, which is a rather puzzling piece of quackery. (Sexism meets twisting-the-facts-to-fit-your-opinion. There was one place which made me laugh out loud, where he claims that dyscalculia lies a the opoosite end of the spectrum. I’ve both, so what?) But it looks scientific enough for the average user to believe it.
Asperger’s people, if any stereotype might contain a grain of truth, are more like gentle, reserved nerds than trolling douchebags. But it’s a very diverse bunch, really.
And as a bonus, look at this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4680971/Charles-Darwin-had-autism-leading-psychiatrist-claims.html
I mean hey, we’ve already known that autism is essential (according to Hans Asperger himself) for technological and scientific progress… but this is an especially cute possibility.