Monday, February 25th .....

Wow!  I have found a terrific app for my iPad called ebuzzing.  It appears to be just another site showing youtube videos and so on but, when you dig a little deeper, it has great stuff.  I looked at a UK magazine site and found a series of articles on ephinenon (the science of religion and non-belief).  In it, there is a report on why religious people have a problem with outsiders (apparently Christians are more likely to be hostile to others whom they perceive as being outside their group).

The article that I found most interesting was a report on a study which investigated the claim that people on the autism spectrum were more likely to be atheists than neuro-typicals.  The base results were clear – people with ASD are less likely to believe in God than the rest of us.  But the analyses went further. The researchers also asked about empathy, using questions like “I often find it difficult to judge if someone is rude or polite” and “I am good at predicting how someone will feel.”

And, they found that empathy correlated with belief and that a lack of empathy correlated with a lack of belief.  So how does having empathy encourage belief?  Well, brain imaging studies find that when highly religious people engage in personal prayer, they use the same parts of the brain as they would when talking to a personal friend. 

“So it seems that an essential part of a 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.”

Ebuzzing also has a high tech section but one of the articles here was called “10 things Apple totally messed up.”  What a waste of energy.  Everyone knows that Apple is perfect and only those of limited intellect would try to dig out information on their so-called mistakes.