Why men don't like church: testosterone

The Ottawa Citizen ^ | Sunday, December 22, 2002 | Emanuella Grinberg

[freeforall]

Why men don't like church: testosterone Skipping services typical of engaging in 'short-sighted' risks

Emanuella Grinberg The Ottawa Citizen

Sunday, December 22, 2002

The risk-taking impulse that makes more men than women commit crimes is also the reason men are more likely not to be religious, says a sociologist.

"It seems that not being religious is a form of risk-taking, consistent with other patterns of short-sighted behaviour in men," said Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington, whose study will be published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

"Every minister knows it's harder to get the guys to church than the women," he said. "We ought to be asking why this is."

Biological differences between men and women mean that men are more likely to have an "underdeveloped ability to inhibit their impulses," he said. "Especially those involving immediately gratification and thrills."

Mr. Stark based his conclusions on World Values Surveys, a poll of residents in 57 countries, with about 1,000 respondents in each country, which included the U.S., most European countries, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Turkey, China and India. The results showed that there were sex differences everywhere, even in religions that are very male-centred, such as Orthodox Judaism.

Mr. Stark and fellow sociologist Alan Miller published another paper based on whether gender socialization or differences in social power played a role in religiousness. Studies have shown that career women are just as religious as housewives, he said.

Mr. Stark isn't satisfied with the notion that women are socialized to be more nurturing and have more time for worship than men. For him, it is a matter of gender that makes men less religious, but not a matter of the socialization of genders, said Mr. Stark.

"It used to be said that women were socialized to raise the kids and take care of the home, but when you compare a career woman to a housewife, you see that both are still a heck of a lot more religious than any man."

He says that if not a product of socialization, low rates of male religiousness can be attributed to physiology, much like higher instances of crime among men compared with women.

"There are big gender differences among Christians, Orthodox Jews and Muslims, but in each case, more women are going to more services and saying they adhere to religious mores than men. If it were a matter of socialization, it would show up in the results," he said.

Mr. Stark also said his findings are consistent with the beliefs of criminologists across North America who find aggression more prevalent in men than women.

"High testosterone levels have been proven to make men more likely to commit crimes. The tendency in men toward risky behaviour keeps turning up even where socialization is different, and so does crime and delinquency."

© Copyright 2002 The Ottawa Citizen

[freeforall]

Explains the appeal of Islam!'short-sighted' risks

[johniegrad]

Does this mean that all men should go on Depo-Provera?

[Argh]

Huh! I thought it was because on Sunday the NFL conflicts with church in the western part of the country. (lame joke, I know)

[IronJack]

patterns of short-sighted behaviour in men

Uh huh. Those the same patterns that are responsible for every major development in Western civilization? We should ALL be so myopic ...

[mfulstone]

Nope

It's because men aren't flooded with smarmy-emotion-inducing hormones every month. Therefore, they examine religion without emotional bias.

[Chemnitz]

The feminist church has driven most men from the typical congregation. Look at how the ELCA, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, and the Episcopalians have gone downhill in the last 20 years. Add the "witness" of the Unitarian Universalist Association. (In truth, all the denominations follow the UAA trends by a few years.)

Notice that Wisconsin Synod and the Missouri Synod want to be just like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Like the ELCA, those two synods are failing. White-washed sepulchres full of dead men's bones.

[moyden]

Or could it be that mainstream denominations (like those found in Canada) are primarily social clubs that offer little concrete principle to believe in.

[freeforall]

My wife wouldn't agree> The middle east may an example of overly excited religious men.

[RLK]

I inhibit my impulses. My standards of morality would make the average minister cringe in fear, which is why we don't get along. People of the cloth tend to have the lowest IQ and MAT scores of all the professions, which make conversation and other association with them a burden. I do not believe people once lived to be 900 years old. The Bible is a hidiously gruesome brutal document of doubtful historical fact. It has nothing to do with risk-taking.

[gcruse]

 "It seems that not being religious is a form of risk-taking..."

In that case, it would be wise to fervently believe in every
religion that has ever come to the mind of man.  People who
are religious because of the risk of not being so are cowardly.
Such a calculated faith is more worthless than an unexamined one swallowed whole.

[Nick Danger]

A business that holds its customers in such contempt would be on its way to bankruptcy.

What's that? He can't get men to come to his church? No surprise there.

The customers are not the enemy. I repeat: the customers are not the enemy.

[MHT]

Such drivel......

The reason that men don't like church is the same reason that little boys don't like to sit still. It's boring. There's no action and it often takes supreme concentration to get through the often repetitious ritual to the intellectual meat. There is great room for distraction and day-dreaming.

I also think that many men, over the years, have been able to see through the absolute shallowness of many of today's clergy and because more men are conservative by nature, they don't buy the liberal agenda pushed on a captive audience from the pulpit. Women are more "touchy-feely" so they feel more comfortable with the micro-managing solutions offered by many modern churches. For men who like engagement in the process, there is no opportunity for criticism or discussion, so why bother?

[MHT]

A great book on Catholicism, Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberalism Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church, also points out how nuns became the dominant determinants in who got to go to seminary. Those who were sensitive to the feminist agenda were selected over more traditional candidates. Eventually, this has led to a strongly homosexual contingent in the seminary itself. Quite an indictment of the Catholic Church in America, the process of educating priests, and a warning for other denominations.

[LDO4CNO]

Amen brother

[Eternal_Bear]

Maybe men don't attend Church because they are more rational and logical?

[JoeSixPack1]

MEN = BAD
White MEN = Badder
White Christian MEN = really, really bad
All other demoninational MEN = almost as really bad but not as bad as "really, really bad"

Women = exempt

Let's bash men today!!!
Today?
Why is today different?
Because it's not yesterday.
oh.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Maybe it's because men think that they are better and know more than God.

[aristeides]

Biological differences between men and women mean that men are more likely to have an "underdeveloped ability to inhibit their impulses," he said. "Especially those involving immediately gratification and thrills."

And what about impulses to defend others, especially women and children? Any reason you choose not to mention those, Dr.? Think there might not be a reason why this tendency is biologically favored?

[hinckley buzzard]

'Does this mean all men should go on Depo-Provera?"

No. LOL! This is an example of junk science perpetrated by two academic frauds outside their areas of competence. Let me correct two plain cold falsehoods on which this armchair speculation is based:

1. Testosterone does not induce higher levels of violent crime.

2. Testosterone does not increase impulsiveness, or inability to delay gratification, or heighten "short-term risktaking."

The basic impact of testosterone, is to increase a person's ability to exercise dominance over his environment. In other words, testosterone is the driving force behind the taming of the wilderness, the development of science and technology, and the creation of social institutions from marriage to the nation state to maintain the social order necessary to a complex civilization. It is also the energy behind men's generally greater interest in initiating sex.

Risk-taking is of course an inherent part of exploration and discovery, of invention and mastery, but this is a civilizing virtue, not a shortcoming as these two androgynes would have us believe.

It is no accident that men have been the leaders in all these fields, while women are more comfortable with the passivity and intellectual vacuum of religious ritual, the submission to some arbitrary authority; and for the most part of history, enjoying the benefits of progress while contributing little to the real world.

Really, this screed is a throwback to the 1980's androphobia, which led a brigade of chronically PMS-ing white-chick social workers to inflame the anti-male sexual hysteria of the 1990's.

It has always amused me that academic eunuchs sweating in self-reproach, buy into this "testosterone poisoning" crap, but then they in their stagnant campus hothouse backwaters are much like the women they admire, who find in religion an escape from the rigors of living a real life.

[Hila]

The congregation where scriptural truth is preached and practiced is more rational and logical than any bunch of faithless men. I don't think men avoid chuch because they are less emotional, they avoid the church that gives them religious and meaningless traditions. But once a man finds the Man, Jesus the Lord, then that man becomes stronger, more compassionate, wiser and fulfilled. Find the real deal and see your men change - for Good.