It’s Official: Men Win!

I think the data confirms that religion has higher prevalence among oppressed groups. We’ve seen the statistical difference in belief among blacks and whites as well.

That women think with their feelings more?

I’m not “absolutely certain” I exist, that’s alot of people who are absolutely certain an invisible being exists.

I’m just glad I’m one of the enlightened females outside of the 86% and outside of the US.

I think the data confirms that religion has higher prevalence among oppressed groups. We’ve seen the statistical difference in belief among blacks and whites as well.

I don’t buy this argument. Ask the GLBT community and see well the trend holds up.

That women think with their feelings more?

On the MBTI scale, about 60% of women are type F compared to 40% of men, so that’s a possibility.

Another possibility is that some of the respondents are lying. Some women have a strong desire to conform to “societal” norms and so may express more extreme religiosity than they really feel. Of course, the same effect would probably exist among male respondents, although possibly not to the same extent.

To add to what Zac said above, I believe that people also turn more to religion when they are economically underprivileged, as women commonly tend to find themselves in comparison to men.

Going off in a different direction, men are taught that their successes are the result of their hard work and ingenuity, whereas women are often conditioned to attribute their successes to good luck. Perhaps this could also translate to a higher likelihood to turn to something spiritual.

Finally, if we consider that in a society that is secular to the extent that the US’s is–that is, no state religion–religion is part of the “domestic sphere,” which is also traditionally the domain of women, so perhaps they find themselves turning to it more frequently because it was more part of their day-to-day lives in the domestic sphere than men experience as they move between the domestic and public spheres.

(I realize that with the rise of evangelicalism in the US since the Reagan era, religion is no longer confined to the domestic sphere. Prior to that, evangelicals and other conservative religious folk were not exactly encouraged by their churches to get involved politically/to use the church as an organizing point for political movements.)

Hemant, you got it all wrong – freethinking women win. We have more freethinking men to choose from, while you guys have to search harder for an atheist chick…. victory!

I would guess it is more to do with the association with religion and solid family values. People tend to find religion again once they have children (citation needed) because it is seen as the nurturing, responsible thing to do and women probably have a greater tendency to want to do the nurturing, responsible thing. Men are more likely to want to buy the motorcycle and the golf clubs.

Just a guess. You can bet the answer is going to be fairly nuanced and multi-faceted.

Jennifurret said:

We have more freethinking men to choose from, while you guys have to search harder for an atheist chick…. victory!

Which means we atheist-chicks-seeking-same are even worse off statistically.

thanks for depressing me Jennifurret!

Okay, if no one else is going to do it, I’ll just go ahead and say what everyone else is thinking – men are less religious because they’re more logical.

*gasp*

I went there.

Well, for one I notice that the amount of women and men who are religious is only 7%, whereas actually at least believing in God gets you a difference is 12%, and the difference in actually preforming one’s religious beliefs (like praying or attending church) becomes 17 and 14% respectively. So while men and women enjoy the social benefits of claiming religion at similar levels, more women who claim religion are genuinely religious. So, depending on what you consider the most important aspect of religion women are 5-10% more likely to behave in a manner consistent with there claimed beliefs, or, to put it a different way, 5-10% less likely to be big ‘ol hypocrites.

Anyway, I think these numbers (in addition to many other complex factors) reflect the fact that women are encouraged in our society to respond emotionally, not logically. From a young age girls are taught “math is hard” and science is for boys. Women who pursue these fields find themselves alone and often gawked at only to be told by the president of Harvard’s they are probably inherently less capable. In short skepticism is seen at inherently unwomanly. Even a lot of strong feminist women fall into this goddess bulls**t. Which, yes is definitely sucky for all us atheist-chicks-seeking-same.
In short, I blame the patriarchy (natch).

What can we learn from this…?

That sexism is alive and well

Women are taught to conform from a young age – “be a good girl” – whereas men are taught that it’s ok to break a few rules, it’s practically expected of them. After all, “boys will be boys”. This goes on all through our lives. For example, women who have multiple sexual partners are shamed, whereas men who do are praised, women who hold powerful positions are bitches, whereas it’s perfectly for a man to hold one, etc.

Religious groups also give women the community and support they may need, especially in a day and age when most women work outside the home, but still shoulder the majority of housework and childcare. Men, especially white, middle-class men, are given a lot more leeway when it comes to stepping out of line, in terms of society’s norms. Is it really surprising then, that white middle-class men make up the majority of atheists?

Sabayon said:

In short skepticism is seen at inherently unwomanly.

i agree…..but why is this?

somehow ‘spirituality’ has come to equal ‘wisdom’ to some.

Have any of you seen the film ‘The Hospital’? in it, the main female character, when asked “what DO you believe in Miss Drummond?”, responds: “I believe in everything”

I can only think that this favour associated with ‘belief’ is somehow related to ‘being hopeful’ ~ or the power that is associated with ‘having faith’….

in any event, it’s highly annoying.

Sabayon said:

In short, I blame the patriarchy (natch).

*teehee*

does beginning to look like an ancient ‘goddess’ sculpture count for anything positive?

you know, Judd, my first instinct was the same, but thinking about it further, I am not so sure. As someone raised conservatively-later-turned-atheist, I would have to say that the hardest thing in admitting atheism was not the logic of it, but eschewing the cultural norm and more than 20 years in church. Women, I think, are often more in tune with what people think of them. It is hard for many woman to go against cultural norms, whether is in appearances or in behavior, including religion.

This would make a very interesting study–what kind of women become atheists? That could give us a clue on the answer. Hmm, maybe I found my next research project. . .

Judd:

You beat me to it. It’s surely more nuanced than that. But men, on every cognition and intelligence exam, have higher logical/spatial reasoning/mathematical ability, on average.

There are surely societal factors, as many of the astute (and dare I presume politically correct) posters have mentioned. I think each reason presented above (“boys will be boys”, cultural conformity, family structure and religion, etc…) have merit. But I think the disparity results in a basic propensity to distinguish reason from emotion. Women, with higher levels of estrogen and a biological imperative to be the child bearers and subsequently their nurturers, will tend to make decisions more so on feeling than objective analysis. When you kill a boar, as men did in early humanity, it only matters that the arrow has the right trajectory, not the tone in which you speak to the arrow.

Unbrainwashed, high testosterone levels have been scientifically shown to decrease reasoning ability, estrogen never has. Psycological studies suggest that the “biological imperative” to nuture children is bullshit. By the way, IQ tests carry massive cultural biases (every American who took the first IQ test tested as mentally retarded because they were designed in France). IQ tests given in the US are desigened for upper class white men. Look over the evidence again, with the same critical eye you use about religion instead of assuming women are stupid and going from there.

Why does it such an unpalatable notion that the most vulnerable among us are the ones who most seek out protective “higher powers”? I see every impulse we have as having to do with survival, pushing us onto a quest for security.

Why Women Are Bound to Religion: An Evolutionary Perspective

Why Women Are Bound to Religion: An Evolutionary Perspective

Ugh, evopsych bunk is creeping into this discussion.

I’d definitely lean towards cultural conditioning in a deeply patriarchal and misogynistic society. Perhaps a better way to look at it is to ask ourselves why men score lower?

What can we learn from this…?

Wrong question. What can religious people learn from this?

If, for us, “Men Win”, then you can reach the conclusion that, for them, “Women Win”. In other words, religious men are pwned by religious women. Where’s the misogynism again?

Doesn’t anyone remember “You Just Don’t Understand” and the later popular book “Men are From Mars, Women Are From Venus“?

Women prize affiliation in the way that men prize independence. An instinct to morph oneself toward similarity to a group is a strong female trait. Religions reward this behavior.

Men prefer to be outliers; to influence via outstanding performance. Religions are fractured by this behavior. But they are also started by it.

If you google “women more religious than men” you’ll find that this is a well known phenomena and is true across cultures and time. There are many explanations, but most of them seem like bunk to me.

The “men are more risk taking, so they’re more willing to risk hell” theory struck me as particularly annoying. That one totally misses the mark for understanding the mindset of people who don’t believe.

I’d love to see numbers on the GLBT population and religion. I run into a number of non-GLBT people who assume my wife and I are atheists *because* we were run off by religion–and thus we get lots of “our church is very accepting.” But most of the other GLBT people I know are religious, some exceedingly so. They may not attend church regularly, depending on the congregations available to them, but they truly believe.

(I even just asked my wife if she can think of a *single* other gay person we know who’s also an atheist, and the consensus is no.)

This is already well known, true MH. I have to think, though, that this is a case of men often not giving a crap what others think of them, whereas women often can’t let go, either because they are worried about what someone (friend, family, church brother/sister) would think or say, or because it’s a community they grew up in and they’re loath to give it up because it gives them a comfortable “center” so to speak.

I don’t know that there needs to be anything wrong with that.

I’m so not digging the women-are-less-logical-because-they’re-women train of thought some of y’all are heading down. Enculturation has far more to do with the mind than biology, and it is unfortunate that most people feel it necessary to conform to society’s tight standards (men have their own culturally-induced problems as well, of course, but different ones, for the most part). Personally I find that nothing impedes my logic, and I may be an exception but it is certainly not due to my levels of testosterone or anything like that.

I believe a Christian group did a study a few years ago on the ‘unchurched’ and broke them down from U1 (easy to persuade into a church) to U5 (very hostile to going to church). U5s were more likely to be women.

So though more women than men may be very religious, among the most antagonistic there may again be more women than men.

hrmmm.. Interesting thought there Erp, do women just tend towards extremes?

I don’t know. I suspect that women are more likely to be burnt badly by some conservative religions and so be very active in their rejection. Most surveys seem to lump all atheists together so it may be difficult to distinguish between the O’Hairs and the Mehtas.

What can we learn from this…?

That the results of a survey can say anything we want them to.

Sadly some of the very people most oppressed by religion embrace it the most (save for gay people, who tend to chuck it more readily because they’re so badly treated right now). Women tend to like community, which they can find in religious groups. They’re also often fond of family events and that “tradition” stuff, which religion stresses a great deal.

I can’t help but wonder if some women rely on god and religion because they simply don’t have a good enough support network in their lives. (Moving to new communities, “suburban isolation” and the like can cause this.) If you don’t have friends and family to call on and visit routinely in your life, an imaginary friend and the apparent friendliness of people at church would be a good substitute to many.

Was anyone else fooled by their social conditioning to associate blue with men and pink with women and therefore misread the chart?

For a minute or so I thought to myself, “These results contradict everything I have ever read about the relationship of belief between men and women and who is more likely to hold religious beliefs.” Then I looked at the chart a little closer and realized my mistake.

Girls are much more likely than boys to have curfews. When both have them, boys’ curfews will usually be later than girls. When boys act rebellious or disregard parental commands, we say “boys will be boys.” Girls get no such excuses. Parents, even so-called enlightened or feminist parents, will seek to control the romantic lives of their daughters, forbidding them or, at the very least, actively discouraging them from dating until they are adult. Boys are encouraged to date.

From the very beginning, a girl’s life is controlled by others. She is told to be good, proper, moral, virtuous, and there are terrible consequences for deviance (when is the last time you heard a boy being called a “slut”?). Is it any wonder that, after all this extra attention, they would be less likely to break away from social norms and become atheists?

Saying that this is due to some biological trait women possess (like that they are too “emotional” to leave religion) is ill-considered at best, sexist at worst. If biology plays any part at all, we cannot know its extent and I’d be willing to bet that it would only account for a very small number of women who are refusing to leave religion. The fact is quite simply that we act as though a woman’s mind and body were communal property, and then we turn around and say that she’s too “emotional” to think for herself! As if we haven’t spent her entire life cultivating her emotionality and condemning any sign of independent thought she might show!

Given the discussion here and the insistence on an almost 100% nurture explanation, I think it’s pretty obvious many of the commenters aren’t actually “non-religious”. Of course, I’m exempting yl999, Judd, and myself.

I think many here subscribe to the religion of political correctness, deluded leftism, or the delusion of gross egalitarianism.

These are the individuals who repudiate evolutionary psychology offhand because it opposes their basic premise of social equity. These individuals who decry creationists for ignoring scientific facts and then hold the idea that evolutionary pressures would have no bearing on practical human qualities (i.e. such as gender disparities in math or leadership potential).

See not even atheists are free from “religious” doctrine? A quick gander at PC Meyer (yes I spelled it wrong on purpose) is quite enough evidence of that.

The Unbrainwashed:

I think you will find that most of the commenters here aren’t speaking out of PCness. We’ve considered explanations of the stats with just as much logic as you. Only, we’ve come to a different conclusion from you. That’s ok. That’s how logic works. Reread the arguments made by the other side and you’ll see that they’re based on actual reasoning, not “it’s not nice to say that about women so you shouldn’t,” which, incidentally, is what PC is.

Also, for someone who claims to be “non-religious,” you sure like to dismiss opinions that differ from yours. You know, like those religious folk who don’t like to hear atheists’ opinions all that much. Just something to think about.

Whether “nature or nurture” have the upper hand, it’s still bloody sexist to say “Men Win”. Grimalkin’s points are valid, but even if there was conclusively a natural bias towards women being more religious, women are individuals. Many of them will not conform to the average. I’m a woman and an athiest, the Pope is a man, but shame on my sex eh? (For the example of a man, please note I could’ve used pretty much any other religious leader. But I’m not going to gloat over that because I’m not prepared to lump 50% of the population together.)

Just saying, it would’ve been much more helpful to try and get to the social roots of why women are more religious.

We’ve considered explanations of the stats with just as much logic as you. Only, we’ve come to a different conclusion from you. That’s ok. That’s how logic works. Reread the arguments made by the other side and you’ll see that they’re based on actual reasoning, not “it’s not nice to say that about women so you shouldn’t,” which, incidentally, is what PC is.

All of this applies to intelligent design vs evolution. I’ve read plenty of ID literature, from the likes of Michael Behe and William Dembski especially, that seem to be reasonable and high level analysis. They seem to have a strong grasp of the biological concepts and use much jargon that I’m simply not familiar with. Their arguments are well thought out and seem to conform to scientific and logical principles.

But in the end, despite SEEMING reasonable, their ideas are all garbage. They have absolutely no merit and despite appealing to science and reason, their opinions are based primarily on their biased worldview.

There are great arguments that attempt to minimize the effect of nature in the existence of gender disparities. Many of them are provided here. I especially liked your social explanation of the phenomenon.

But while good arguments exist on both sides, the majority of the data speaks to a basic biological cause of gender disparities. Many, including PC Meyer, dismiss this evidence in much the same manner as ID-iots dismiss evolutionary proof.

One can pontificate about science and objectivity, but the basic premise is social equity and anything that opposes this notion will be dismissed as misogynistic or short-sighted (much like the ID-iots who claims all evolutionists are depraved atheists).

Not exactly. Intelligent design is still based on the idea that there is a higher power out there, which just can’t be proven empirically. Neither can evolutionary psychology. There is no fossil record we can assemble, no genetic similarities to examine. Evolutionary psychology is mostly trying to connect the dots. Let’s not place it on the same level as the theory of evolution.

Also, it’s a huge leap from saying that women have lower spacial-reasoning skills than men to saying that women are less logical than men. Logic is made up of so many different parts. I’d love to know what you have to say about women’s superiour conflict-resolving skills, for example. Doesn’t that take logic too? Recent studies have also reported that there actually isn’t that great a disparity between girls’ and boys’ performance in math after all.

I’d like to see that broken down by level of education and socio-ec.

It’s possible much of what we are seeing here is educational and economic disparity between the sexes. We know those corollate with a lack of religiosity.

I’m not going to hazard any guesses or make any deeper statement than what is broadly shown in this data.

I notice others are very willing to jump to some extreme conclusions. Skeptics, are we?

Neither can evolutionary psychology. There is no fossil record we can assemble, no genetic similarities to examine

Is evopsych more conjecture than evolution sure? But you make it sound like it’s baseless hypothesizing from misogynistic and racist intellectuals. There are scientific underpinnings to evopsych, such as using natural selection, namely group selection, to explain the ubiquity of racism. Germane to gender disparities, there exist fundamental hormonal differences between men and women that have a quantifiable effect in society, such as men committing more crimes than women. In addition, brain scanning technology, as well as simply weighing brains relative to body mass, suggest men have slightly larger brains than women. I could keep going. But the point is that much data can be provided to justify societal differences as being caused by biological differences. As with evolution, you can counter with seemingly reasonable evidence (ID-iots use irreducible complexity and entropy while you can quote Stephen Jay Gould at length). But it doesn’t mean you’re right.

I’d love to know what you have to say about women’s superiour conflict-resolving skills

Interesting that you’re willing to accept woman’s superiority in one aspect (and by extension, accepting a premise of evopsych), but refuse to do so in another context where women just happen to be inferior. Women have better conflict reasoning skills because they are more equipped for emotionally charged situations. This is an imperative from being the child bearers and having to develop higher skills of language, communication, and social cooperation. The main difference results from reading emotions and people, not logic.

Recent studies have also reported that there actually isn’t that great a disparity between girls’ and boys’ performance in math after all.

That study, which I’ve seen plenty of times before, is quite dubious. Not surprising a WOMEN’S STUDIES prof did it. State tests are largely the domain of social engineers attempting to moderate all gender and racial gaps. Cheating, as detailed in Freaknomics, is rampant. Further, as the article states, many tests aren’t a good measure of higher reasoning skills.

I prefer to look at the SAT, Math League competitions, etc. which clearly provide a much better gauge of aptitude than achievement tests like those cited.

I notice others are very willing to jump to some extreme conclusions. Skeptics, are we?

As Richard Dawkins said (paraphrasing): “We should be open minded, but so much that our brains fall out.” If the evidence suggests a truth, no matter how socially unappealing, one should accept it. Apparently, PC atheists like to tell this to hardcore religious freaks, but can’t follow their own advice.

Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennet also gave glowing reviews of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate which deals with gender dispairites.

“how courageous to buck the liberal trend in science, while remaining in person the best sort of liberal”, perhaps recalling his own struggle with creationism. “We academics are too sophisticated to fall for taboos,” Dan Dennett adds, with approval.”

About 1/2 the people who claim to be a part of a religion don’t really have anything to do with it.

About 1/2 of pray daily but about 40% of them don’t know what, if anything, they are praying to.

If the evidence suggests a truth, no matter how socially unappealing, one should accept it. Apparently, PC atheists like to tell this to hardcore religious freaks, but can’t follow their own advice.

I see you’re attempting to make a broader point about reasoning skills and somehow claim that this survey is support for that. I don’t think that this survey lends support to your argument until you at least account for education level, which would seem quite prudent.

I’m talking about being unwilling to extrapolate anything other than what the data shows from the Pew survey.

Is that PC? Hmm… how strange. I just don’t understand the culture wars sometimes.

The largest gap is only 17 points. that seems too slim a margin to me to make any general statements other than religion infects way too many of us humans.

The Unbrainwashed:

The main reason why most of us don’t give much credence to evopsych is that it can be used to prove anything. If men are shown to be aggressive rapists, evo-psychologists argue that it’s because men don’t have as much biological imperative as women to commit to their children. On the other hand, if men are shown to be kind, nurturing parents, it’s explained away as a result of the higher survivability of that man’s children. And so on. You can figure out some explanation for really any kind of behavior that will make some sense. The problem is that we have zero hard evidence that this was actually the case. The things that make a species successful are so complicated and so circumstantial that to argue that a specific behavior we see today must have made ancient humans adaptive is hogwash. We just don’t have the evidence. I’m not saying that therefore it must all be social, it’s just it’s almost impossible to get evidence that something is definitely biologically determined while it’s easy to see that the genders are treated in very different ways. Maybe the gender differences we see are biological, maybe they aren’t, but we’ll never really know until we see a society that treats both genders fairly and equally, which will probably never happen in our lifetimes. The whole discussion is as much opinion as fact as it stands now.

In any case, it’s just as good a question to ask why men are less religious as it is to ask why women are more so. We know that men are shown less emotion from birth onwards, are given less emotional support, and allowed to display emotion far less than women. Maybe men just have less to lose than women?

On a more humorous note, I still think that the half-naked Jesuses might make a small difference. If they strung the walls with nearly nude women I betcha a few more men would show up on Sunday mornings.

@Sabayon

“told by the president of Harvard’s they are probably inherently less capable”

He didn’t say that, and the belief that he did resembles a religious myth, coupled with a failure to comprehend the most basic fundamentals about statistics. Summers addressed the factually low numbers of women in academia — since he was talking to women in academia, he wasn’t talking about their capabilities, which are presumed to be as high, or higher than those of men in academia. And he was talking about a statistical difference, which doesn’t apply to any specific woman. But most importantly, it’s a blatant falsehood that he spoke of inherent inferiority. What he said was that there tends to be larger variance in males than in females; the bell curve is flatter and the tails are longer for men, resulting in greater extremes, so you get more very tall men and very short men than you do women. And he hypothesized that the same was true of intellectual factors, producing more idiots among men — and more geniuses. That does not imply that women generally are inherently less capable than men, or that any specific woman is in any way less capable than any specific man; it especially doesn’t say that the women in academia are less capable, since they are known to be at the high end of the curve. You can easily find his speech online and see that that’s what he said, and not the uncomprehending, ignorant, and downright dishonest myth that has been propagated.

If the evidence suggests a truth, no matter how socially unappealing, one should accept it.

No, actually, one should not accept a claim on evidence that is merely suggestive, and certainly should not elevate it to “a truth” — to do so is the behavior of an ideologue.

P.S.

I notice others are very willing to jump to some extreme conclusions. Skeptics, are we?

As Richard Dawkins said (paraphrasing): “We should be open minded, but so much that our brains fall out.”

You managed to get the import of Dawkins’ adage exactly backwards. Dawkins is saying that one should be skeptical, while you’re using it as a rebuttal to someone arguing that you are being insufficiently skeptical — that your mind is so open to evopsych that your brain is falling out. Regardless of the truth of the matter of evopsych or who is or is not sufficiently skeptical, your appeal to Dawkins’ statement here is a big fail. Oh, and here’s an even bigger one:

But while good arguments exist on both sides, the majority of the data speaks to a basic biological cause of gender disparities. Many, including PC Meyer, dismiss this evidence in much the same manner as ID-iots dismiss evolutionary proof.

If you’re going to slander someone, at least try to get his name somewhat right. PZ Myers does not dismiss any evidence, what he dismisses are fallacies and misrepresentations wielded by ideologues like yourself.

Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennet also gave glowing reviews of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate which deals with gender dispairites.

“how courageous to buck the liberal trend in science, while remaining in person the best sort of liberal”, perhaps recalling his own struggle with creationism. “We academics are too sophisticated to fall for taboos,” Dan Dennett adds, with approval.”

Did your mother teach you to prevaricate like that? Dawkins and Dennett were referring to the general nature/nurture debate, not to the specific claims of gender disparity that you’re hawking.

Not surprising a WOMEN’S STUDIES prof did it

ad hominem much? And Elizabeth Spelke is not “a women’s studies prof”.

it’s still bloody sexist to say “Men Win”.

There’s nothing sexist about it, any more than it would have been sexist to say “Women Win” if the numbers had been the other way around. Such misuse of terms like “sexist” devalue them.

I’m a woman and an athiest, the Pope is a man, but shame on my sex eh?

Strawman. “Men Win” simply doesn’t mean “every man wins” — it’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to a statistical difference.

But I think the disparity results in a basic propensity to distinguish reason from emotion. Women, with higher levels of estrogen and a biological imperative to be the child bearers and subsequently their nurturers, will tend to make decisions more so on feeling than objective analysis. When you kill a boar, as men did in early humanity, it only matters that the arrow has the right trajectory, not the tone in which you speak to the arrow.

Good grief that is ignorant. You might want to read Marvin Minsky’s “The Emotion Machine” — human intelligence is impossible without emotion. Your last sentence suggests, very wrongly, that autism is a survival trait.