Reactions to story from Pharyngula

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  Gender differences and religion: Is it about risk-taking? Maybe.

  http://merkdorp.blogspot.com/2008/05/gender-differences-and-...
  139 days ago in Merkdorp Psuchix · Authority: 4

  In a now somewhat older article on the blog Pharyngula, P.Z. Myers commented on a press release about two papers by Rodney Stark on why men tend to be less religious than women. Here's a snippet of the release: "Recent studies of biochemistry imply that both male irreligiousness and male lawlessness are rooted in the fact that far more males than females have an underdeveloped ability to inhibit their impulses, especially those involving immediate gratification and thrills." The upshot is that some men are shortsighted and don't think ahead, and so "going to prison or going to hell just doesn't matter to these men," Stark said. Myers' response was a bit of a distortion, "Did this guy just compare atheism to murder and rape?" The answer is pretty obviously no. However, Stark did appear to indicate that atheism is impulsive, which seemed a bit strange to me, and certainly doesn't square with the deconversion stories that I read. To give Stark the benefit of the doubt, I googled and found the two articles that were mentioned in the press release: "Physiology and Faith: Addressing the 'Universal' Gender Difference in Religiousness," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. (2002) 41:495-507. Alan S. Miller and Rodney Stark, "Gender and Religiousness: Can Socialization Explanations Be Saved?" American Journal of Sociology. (2002): 107: 1399-1423.In my opinion, the second article, coauthored with Alan Miller, was the better one, and certainly the more thorough of the two. I noticed two things about both articles. First, they were more generally about irreligion rather than just atheism, although atheism would definitely be considered a subset of irreligion in these articles. Second, if the authors of the articles had discussed a tendency among males to take risks in general rather than impulsive risks in particular, the second article would have been more plausible at explaining gender disparity in religiosity. That second article did tentatively show that when the risks to being irreligious are lower, as is the case in Japan, there is less disparity between the religiosity of men and women. This would have been explained just as well by a more general male tendency to risk-taking, rather than a specifically impulsive one. Of course, that assumes that there is a such a general male tendency, which opens up a whole host of issues. However, testing that assumption would at least be more promising than trying to explain away the very non-impulsive nature of many deconversions. I don't think I'd put too much stock in either article, though.
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  Atheism is a risk-taking behavior?

  http://neuralgourmet.com/2008/05/19/atheism-is-a-risk-taking...
  140 days ago in Neural Gourmet · Authority: 51

  PZ unearthed a paper from a few years back that says atheism is similar to “any other shortsighted, risky and impulsive behavior… [people] …engage in, such as assault, robbery, burglary, murder and rape.” Guess what? The author is a religious scholar, doncha know. Nope. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Pharyngula: We are such bad boys
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  Atheism is risk taking now is it?

  http://museinvivo.blogspot.com/2008/05/atheism-is-risk-takin...
  143 days ago in Muse In Vivo · Authority: 4

  Why, would you think, would a higher percentage of women than men follow religion? It might have something to do with the fact that men worldwide are generally more free to exercise their own agency over their lives, whereas women are not. And even where women are permitted to make their own choices, they're expected by almost all Western societies to make societally appropriate choices whereas 'boys will be boys'. Or perhaps that women are less likely to go into higher education than men. Or perhaps that men are encouraged to discuss and ponder intellectual subjects like religion and philosophy, whereas women are encouraged to stay at home and take care of the kids. (And that's just from reading a couple pages of the comments section on PZ's post.) Or you could be a blithering idiot and make a giant leap of logic and claim that it's just another one of those risk-taking behaviors that men are obviously more prone to than women. What? Yeah.
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  Pharyngula: We are such bad boys

  http://axiomsandchoices.blogspot.com/2008/05/pharyngula-we-a...
  143 days ago in axioms and choices · Authority: 1

  Pharyngula: We are such bad boys

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