I think another reason a lot of people on the spectrum (including myself) are not Christian is we often don’t have the social skills to know what should be said only in private verses what can be said in public.  Even if we do know this we had to learn it by intentional cognitive effort, it wasn’t something we could ascertain on auto pilot.  As a result we consider public and private information on equal footing where neurotypicals have an easier time of brushing the private things under the rug.

So that brings me to Christianity.  The problem with Christianity (particularly the Americanized version which God promises certain things, principally prosperity or at least that your life would make some kind of sense) is it can only survive in an environment where its successes are lauded but its failures are swept under the rug (because we don’t talk about them).  Mental illness (God telling people to do crazy stuff), early death, chronic conditions, no experience of the divine whatsoever, vocational failure, etc.. are all things one can’t bring up in public.  Church has the feeling of Instagram where we present our highlight reel while keeping the behind the scenes as tight of a secret as possible.

I think one of the reasons millennials are leaving religion in droves is because of their authenticity.  They’re willing to ask 3am questions at 8pm.  To them authenticity is truth, they don’t want to subscribe to some life script that feels too much like a real life version of social media.  They already have an Instagram.