This is topic Male / Female % of Believers in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Chaz_King (Member # 3184) on :
 
Hello everyone, with the recent atheist/agnostic thread, I wanted to address something I have been mulling over lately.

From all of the people I talk to about faith and religion, its seems to me that a majority of the people with a "stronger" grasp of their faith tend to be women, while men tend to question their faith more often. Maybe this is just based on the people I talk to, but it seems to be something that I see in other groups of people also.

I asked a friend of mine who is a devout christian about why he thinks this is, and his first thoughts were that men in our society are usually raised to question everything, never rely on anyone, and to ignore those touchy feely emotions you have going on. Therefore they tend to have a harder time accepting a way of life that lends itself to "giving up control" to a higher power.

What do you guys think, do you think the percentage of women/men agnostics is fairly equal or do you think it is the men that have a harder time accepting religion? If so, why?

NOTE: This thread is not about whether or not religion is right or wrong, or whether or not men are smarter/more logical than women. So please leave those thoughts at the door. The question here is one of why does it seem that more men have trouble easily accepting faith than women. Or if you don't think that this is true, please cite some examples.
 

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Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :
 
As I stated in the Agnostic thread, my sister and I share the same belief.

I believe our case is 50/50.


 

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Posted by Chaz_King (Member # 3184) on :
 
Yes, but outside of your family what do you see the trend to be?
 

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Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
 
Not qualified to judge. I work for Boy Scouts (mostly men, religion not a topic except for a few, and they are religious), and most of my friends are from church, where I don't know the guys unless they are active. My immediate family is all male, and 3/4 are religious. My aunts have beliefs in God and that he loves them, but neither is active in a church. From my perspective, the guys are far more actively religious, but maybe that's because my religion requires it of them.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Men are also overwhelmingly more likely to be scientists, and scientists are overwhelmingly more likely to be atheists.
 

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Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
 
Is that really true? I'm not sure the last half of that statement is true. *goes to see if she can find some research on this*
 

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Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
 
Scientists are more likely to critically evaluate anything and if they don't already have faith in something that exists or perhaps transcends proof, then they tend not to believe in something lacking proof.

An amazingly skeptical bunch, scientists.

-Trevor

Edit: Obviously, this is not a hard and fast rule - there are very devout scientists who accept that things exist beyond their ken - God being one of them. Pokemon, for another.

[ March 24, 2005, 03:06 PM: Message edited by: TMedina ]
 

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Posted by Lady Jane (Member # 7249) on :
 
I can list off the logical arguments of why they would be more likely to be atheists, but I'm suspicious of saying that they are. People have a habit of surprising you.

There's also two statements there. Scientists may be more like to be agnostic than a member of the general population, but the general population overwhelmingly believes in God, so any given scientist is still more likely to be a theist than otherwise.

Added: I've been trying to find some studies, but I can't find anything that isn't biased in one direction or another.

[ March 24, 2005, 03:07 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Ah. Katie, I was saying that scientists are more likely (than the general population) to be atheists, in the same way that men are more likely (than the general population) to be scientists.
 

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Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
 
Frankly, I think the overwhelming majority of people, when pinned down to make a declaration will claim to believe in God in some form or another, but whether this belief actually makes a difference in their lives is open to debate. I know a lot of people who "believe" but whose lives give no indication that they really do. I know even more who "believe" but who don't ever examine that belief or even know exactly what they do believe. When I was in Brazil, I met hundreds of people who would claim to be Catholic, but who had never really read the Bible and who didn't even know many of the basic tenets of their professed faith. I met many who didn't know what transubstantiation was. I met several who did not think that Catholicism was in any way opposed to spiritualism (i.e. Macumba, Voodoo, Black Magic, White Magic, etc). In short, I think most people don't really think about it on a daily basis. YMMV
 

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Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
 
We obviously need to implement funding for the encouragement of females in Atheism. (Thinking of the 50% by 2010 Women in Engineering initiative).

What about pagans?
 

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Posted by digging_holes (Member # 6237) on :
 
I don't know about faith in general, but I know that the pentecostal/charismatic movement has a higher percentage of women than men worldwide. It is also much more widespread in third-world countries than in developed countries, even if most of the money comes from the U.S. And, interestingly, there are more pentecostals and charismatics under the age of 18 than there are over that age.
 

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Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
I don't know about the general population of religious believers, but I think it's reasonably clear that most of the leaders of faith, ie prists, mullahs, shamans, and so on, are male. I'm not sure if any conclusions can be drawn from this, though.

If the rank and file are indeed more likely to be female, could it be because organised churches are good places for social gathering? In other words, maybe it's just because women enjoy socialising more than men do.
 

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Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
 

quote:

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Frankly, I think the overwhelming majority of people, when pinned down to make a declaration will claim to believe in God in some form or another, but whether this belief actually makes a difference in their lives is open to debate. I know a lot of people who "believe" but whose lives give no indication that they really do. I know even more who "believe" but who don't ever examine that belief or even know exactly what they do believe.

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