Religion

Tyler Cowen asks,

bq. So why *are* women more religious than men? Is it just greater risk-aversion?

According to my colleague Louise Roth, in an article from the current ASR co-authored with Jeff Kroll, the answer to the second question is, “No.” Here’s the abstract:

bq. Scholars of religion have long known that women are more religious than men, but they disagree about the reasons underlying this difference. Risk preference theory suggests that gender gaps in religiosity are a consequence of men’s greater propensity to take risks, and that irreligiosity is analogous to other high-risk behaviors typically associated with young men. Yet, research using risk preference theory has not effectively distinguished those who perceive a risk to irreligiousness from those who do not. In this article, we evaluate risk preference theory. We differentiate those who believe in an afterlife, who perceive a risk to irreligiousness, from nonbelievers who perceive no risk associated with the judgment after death. Using General Social Survey and World Values Survey data, multivariate models test the effects of gender and belief on religiousness. In most religions and nations the gender gap is larger for those who do not believe in an afterlife than for those who do, contradicting the predictions of risk preference theory. The results clearly demonstrate that the risk preference thesis is not a compelling explanation of women’s greater average religiosity.

Russell has a long, and typically thoughtful, piece explaining his attitude both to abortion and to regulation of abortion. A teaser:

I’ve probably called myself “pro-life” in the past, maybe way back when I was in high school or an undergraduate. But I have no specific memory of doing so, and I wouldn’t today. Part of this is, simply, because I’m not the hardline, simplistic, killing-a-fetus-is-murder opponent of abortion that I was raised to be. (Reading The Cider House Rules will do that to a person.) Do I still want to deter abortion, including–but not limited to–limiting abortion rights where I think best? Yes, definitely; the revulsion I feel towards the concept is still there. When I first learned about what an “abortion” was as a child, the mental image in my (ten-year-old, perhaps?) mind was of that of doctor wielding a butcher knife, stabbing a baby within a mother’s womb…and frankly, the straightforward medical facts of what an abortion involves don’t lead me to feel that that disturbing image is in any principled way flawed.

But while I would insist that is both impossible and irresponsible to pretend that such sentiments and feelings either could or should be excluded from political discussions, I also acknowledge that you have to be able to at least provide some reasoned account of the roots and parameters of one’s revulsions for political purposes; standing alone, they provide few details and fewer answers.

Go read it, and comment there.

One of the questions — about a long-lived Biblical character — suggests the quiz author believes (amongst other things) in the existence of someone called “Strom Thurman.” It suggests a striking mental image, certainly. Via “PZ Myers”:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/, who naturally also got an A.

_Update_: On the basis of the comments (and, to be honest, the questions), I think it’s fair to say that this post should probably be titled, “The Many Benefits of Taking Absurdly Easy Tests.”

I’ve just finished reading Philip Kitcher’s new book Living With Darwin (UK). It is fantastic. He provides a careful but completely accessible defense of Darwin’s ideas about evolution, against the defenders of Intelligent Design theory. He also agrees with religious opponents of evolutionary theory that it is a genuine threat to a certain kind of religious belief. He calls this “providentialist” belief, on which “the universe was created by a Being who has a great design, a Being who cares for his creatures, who observes the fall of every sparrow and is especially concerned for humanity”. Darwin really is a threat to their beliefs and, in a nice observation that he attributes to Christopher Peacock, Darwin is probably singled out because he is the only threat whose views get encountered in a systematic way by anyone who does not get an elite college education in the humanities (in the US especially). Voltaire, Hume, Kant, all might be seen as worse threats if anyone knew who they were.

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Rod Dreher has converted to Catholicism, then to Orthodoxy, and now to hippie. This is a strange personality type. Nonetheless, well done for the moment, Rod. I’ve always thought that if I were going to bother converting to a religion I’d just go on and be clasped to the bosom of the holy mother Russian church. Why mess around, you know?

Perhaps uncharitable shorter Rod Dreher: “You know, although I’d listened to the Black Sabbath song ‘War Pigs‘ many times before, I felt now as if only now I were hearing it for the first time.”

(With charity towards all, I advise readers to go out and listen to some Sister Rosetta Tharpe. If you’ve never heard her music, it will blow your mind.)

“This thing”:http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/ just arrived from the future.What can I say? if this is the “RDF”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field, sign me up.

_Update_: If you think _I’m_ a Mac fanboy, check out “these photos”:http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/9/6547 of the faithful worshipping the holy relic (it’s behind glass, naturally) at the convention. A Durkheimian moment for the brushed-metal set. They look like the apes in _2001_ gazing at the monolith.

What seems to me a very curious story about Christian groups being drummed out of the student union at Exeter University, is reported here and here. Comment from the Archbishop of Cantebury here. It seems that funding has been withheld because they require members to confirm that they are Christians. I suppose this could be reasonable — the student leaders say that they only want to fund groups that are open to anybody. But who wants to join a Christian Union other than Christians? If I remember correctly the Socialist group I belonged to at college was self-financing, but I’ve no idea whether we could have gotten access to funds if we’d wanted to. We’d certainly have resisted being open to Tories…but its not clear why they’d have joined. And the demand that they change their name because it is misleading (apparently the authorities think that “Christian Union” might mislead potential members into thinking that they are joining an ecumenical group of theists, agnostics, and atheists, whereas it seems obvious that the “Church of England Union” would be the moniker for that group) seems completely bizarre. I hereby demand that the Labour and Conservative parties change their names on the same grounds! The Christians are threatening legal action, and although my instinct is that they must surely be in the right, at least as a matter of reasonableness if not actual law, I do wonder if there is something going on here that isn’t being represented in the stories. I found the online student newspaper of the Exeter students, which is not much more illuminating (apart from the fact that it carries an interview with Noel Edmonds, which is revealing about something). Does anyone know what is going on here?

Today is “World Aids Day”:http://www.worldaidsday.org/default.asp, and “UN AIDS”:http://www.unaids.org/en/ “reports”:http://www.unaids.org/en/GetStarted/UNFamily.asp that another 14.000 children, women and men will become infected with HIV today. This year is 25 years ago that the first case was reported. In those 25 years, there has been a gigantic difference in the impact of HIV/AIDS on the affluent societies versus the poor societies, especially in sub-Saharan African. The life expectancy in some African countries such as Botswana and Swaziland is now well below 35 years. And even these statistics do not reveal the grim reality of children who are growing up without adults, in what social scientists now call ‘childheaded households’. How can a 12 year old girl feed her younger siblings? If there are no neighbours or organisations supporting them, it is likely that her only short-term survival option is prostitution. Long-term survival is something these children simply cannot contemplate.

The theme of this World Aids Day is accountability – not only of individuals who are having unsafe sex (especially those who are infecting others through unwanted sex), but also of religious leaders “discouraging the use and promotion of condoms”:http://www.thebody.com/cdc/news_updates_archive/2003/may27_03/malawi_condoms.html, political leaders of rich societies “who don’t give enough money”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/19/health/main1913718.shtml to fight the epidemic, and political leaders in severely HIV/AIDS-affected countries, such as “Doctor Beetroot”:http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=49983, who are misinforming the population. But World Aids Day is also the day when we should thank the many men and women who are fighting this ugly disease, from grassroots awareness activities up to diplomatic action at the highest level, often in difficult circumstances.

I’m a few days late with this, but still wanted to write a short post about the “total ban on abortion in Nicaragua”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6089718.stm. Abortion is now a criminal act under _all_ circumstances, including when the life of the mother is in danger, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. There was not a single member of the Nicaraguan parliament who voted against the proposal, which has been explained by the fact that there are elections coming up soon, and no political party wanted to allienate the Catholic voters.
From a moral point of view, abortion is a very difficult issue for most people — also for the non-religious. But how can one vote for legislation that forces women to give birth to a baby that is the result of rape or incest? Surely those parliamentarians must not have the faintest idea of what rape and incest does to the life of a girl or a woman. And even worse, how can one take responsibility for legally forcing women to continue a pregnancy if it is likely that both the mother and the foetus will die?
Moreover, from a pragmatic/political point of view it’s clear “what will happen”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1932576,00.html. Girls and women from rich families will go to Cuba (where abortion is legal), and those from poorer families will have illegal (read: unsafe) abortions. The best road to minimising the number of abortions is not to criminalise them, but rather to acknowledge that, whatever degree of (religious) moralising, most people will have sex anyway; to make contraceptives available; and to support women who are faced with an unwanted pregnancy so that they have effective choices between different options, and that, if they choose for abortion, they will have it as early as possible in the pregnancy and under safe circumstances. And let’s hope that no other countries follow this irresponsible move by the Nicaraguan parliament.

Via “Dave Weeden”:http://backword.me.uk/2006/August/why_i_can.html, the “latest moneyspinner”:http://www.sptimes.com/2006/05/06/Tampabay/Scientology_nearly_re.shtml/ to emerge from the “muppet labs”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/03/12/further-muppet-resistance/ at Scientology HQ in Clearwater, FL:

Under wraps for decades, Super Power now is being prepped for its eventual rollout in Scientology’s massive building in downtown Clearwater. … A key aim of Super Power is to enhance one’s perceptions – and not just the five senses we all know – hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard taught that people have 57 “perceptics.” … Hubbard promised Super Power would improve perceptions and “put the person into a new realm of ability.”

How much would you pay to receive this marvellous training? Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand? Don’t answer yet! There’s more. The 57 Perceptics (not a brand of tomato sauce or an unsuccessful doo-wop outfit) include Timen Sight [sic], Tasten Colorn Depth [sic], and Personal Size [if you know what I mean].

Asked about Super Power, church spokesman Ben Shaw provided a written statement: “Super Power is a series of spiritual counseling processes designed to give a person back his own viewpoint, increase his perception, exercise his power of choice, and greatly enhance other spiritual abilities.” Shaw would not say how much the program will cost. Upper levels of Scientology training can run tens of thousands of dollars. He declined to provide further insight into Super Power. “It’s not something I’m willing to provide to you in any manner,” Shaw said.

Comic Book Guy Alert! No information will be imparted to you whatsoever until you answer me these questions three, and also sign over the deeds to your house.

Super Power takes “weeks, not months” to complete, said Feshbach. He would not discuss the specific machines and drills that former Scientologists said are used to enhance perceptions. The perceptics portion of Super Power is one of 12 “rundowns” in the full program … Details of Super Power training have been kept secret even from church members. Like much of Scientology training, details aren’t revealed until one pays to take the course.

Notice the 11 extra rundowns that have just been added to the program, of which Super Power Perceptics is only one! _Now_ how much would you pay? Sign up now! Remember, your very willingness to cough up large amounts of cash for this stuff is evidence that you need professional training to heighten your preceptual awareness of the world and the sort of people who live in it.

I’m still not entirely comfortable about assuming that CT readers are necessarily interested in the stuff I put on the Guardian blog. But this bit on the current attempt by the UK government to stop people pretending to be Plymouth Brethren in order to take advantage of a tax loophole given to them (no really) is pretty ontopic. I’m more interested in comments about what this says about the politics of tax policy than in boilerplate rants about why the government shouldn’t give any special treatment to religious groups, so I thought that having two comments sections on this piece would give me two chances of not having the discussion end up going that way.

Hard one to call. Teams closely matched. Game of two halves.

The Holy Trinity is getting a makeover:

When referring to the Trinity, most Christians are likely to say “Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.”
But leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are suggesting some additional designations: “Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-giving Womb,” or perhaps “Overflowing Font, Living Water, Flowing River.”
Then there’s “Rock, Cornerstone and Temple” and “Rainbow of Promise, Ark of Salvation and Dove of Peace.”
The phrases are among 12 suggested but not mandatory wordings essentially endorsed this month by delegates to the church’s policy-making body to describe a “triune God,” the Christian doctrine of God in three persons.
The Rev. Mark Brewer, senior pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church, is among those in the 2.3-million-member denomination unhappy with the additions.
“You might as well put in Huey, Dewey and Louie,” he said.

Some of the other proposed phrases include “Sun, Light and Burning Ray”, or even “Fire That Consumes, Sword That Divides and Storm That Melts Mountains.” This is a reaction to the supposedly “patriarchal” nature of the usual way to express the Trinity. I say, why not? I like the imagistic poetry of the alternatives. It reminds me of the names for movements in Chinese martial arts. How about “White Crane Spreads Its Wings, Green Dragon Emerges from the Water, and Step Back to Ride the Tiger”?

Seems “the Brights”:http://www.the-brights.net/ is are back in the blogs. “Lindsay Beyerstein”:http://feeds.feedburner.com/Majikthise?m=51 provides an unconvincing defense. One of my first posts on CT was about The Brights and I’ve reproduced it below the fold. I don’t find it plausible that the “Bright” label should be offensive to religious believers, nor am I “uptight” (in Lindsay’s words) about it. Rather, while the term denotes a set of beliefs I’d broadly subscribe to, it connotes a bunch of dweebs in anoraks.
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