Fenster writes:

At the epiphenom blog, Tomas Rees takes a look at empathy and atheism.  The title of the blog post is “Atheists Lack Empathy and Understanding”.  The post reviews existing studies that correlate atheism and autism and goes on to focus more closely on one academic study that uses statistical methods to chart causality relative to factors such as belief in God, autism, gender, tendency to systematize and empathy.  As he concludes:

. . . in the end, this is really good evidence that, at least in the kinds of religion favoured in the USA, an inability to empathise and read other peoples minds is linked to decreased belief in personal gods. But why might this be?

Well, actually it fits well with other research which finds that loneliness can increase belief in the supernatural. And it also fits with brain imaging studies that found that highly religious people who engage in personal prayer use the same parts of their brains as they would when talking to a good friend.

So it seems that an essential part of the belief in a personal God is the ability to relate to it as a personal friend. It perhaps then isn’t surprising that people whose minds don’t work that way are less likely to believe.

Interesting.  It makes intuitive sense to me that the tendency to believe in a supernatural type God could well be associated with psychological or physical differences.  And that autism/empathy could well be one of those axes.  None of this tells you much, though, about whether any such beliefs are well founded.  Who can make the more credible case about God’s existence–those with more empathy or those with less?

Whether autism is a disease or a natural expression of the genome, most people are not autistic and will therefore tend to value empathy, as well as its fruits.  In turn, there may be a tendency to jump from an appreciation of empathy to support for a belief in a supernatural God.

A good deal of the discussion in the comments section relate to the title of the blog post, which is “Atheists Lack Empathy and Understanding”.  Several considered this a perjorative version of the study’s actual conclusions, which don’t have to be read as uncharitable toward atheists.  After all, as one commenter noted, the headline could just as easily have been “Low Empathy can Lead to Atheism”.  Or even the likely Dawkins version: “Empathy a Necessary Precondition for God Delusion”.