what is masculinity?

This is more a post to collect thoughts than to push them.

Something that I have touched on and that I will come back to in the future is that I believe that the modern Church (or most any generation of the Church) knows what to do with masculinity. This is more of an issue today because there are few masculine exploits left that are not somehow related to a vice. To be associated with the Church today is to take on some level of femininity in the name of virtue.

I have been giving this more thought than usual in the last few weeks and am stumped. Being a man who has grown up in a church culture and never really rebelled I have to admit that at this stage I am not sure what Scriptural masculinity should look like. Ministries that target men always seem to focus on the familial responsibilities that come with being a man, but if that is the complete definition of Scriptural masculinity it is a disappointing one. While not fulfilling those responsibilities could damage my sense of masculinity, fulfilling the roles involved does not make me feel masculine.

Since this has been on my mind, I want to ask what you think the definition of Scriptural masculinity is. I do so with some caution, however. Some trends that I have noticed is that men tend to think masculinity is the ability to do the things they want to do or aspire to do, and women tend to think the definition of masculinity is what they are attracted to in a mate. So, what would Scriptural masculinity look like in today's world and why?

how not to review

I spent a couple of hours this weekend doing something I truly enjoy—reorganizing and cleaning up my Netflix queue. When I do that I typically glance through user reviews of some of the movies that I am on the fence about to see if I can get an indication if I would like the movie. Very frequently there is a review that provides very good details about why I personally would or would not like a movie. There are a few things that show up quite a bit that are less than helpful to me, though.

No Reasoning

Why do people think a review that basically says, "This is the greatest film ever," or, "They should have shot everyone involved in this film," but says little more is worth publishing? Tell me why you loved or hated the movie so I know if I am likely to agree or disagree.

Arrogance with Vagueness

A few reviews are kind of preachy regarding the type of movie the reviewer seems to think I should want to watch. The following is not copied from any specific review, but it could be.

"This is an intelligent film that takes its time to develop the plot and the characters, unlike a lot of the more popular mass market films that are nothing more than special effects. If you need an explosion every five minutes, then this movie is not for you."

Aside from the reviewer sounding arrogant, all I get from the review is that the pacing is slow and it may or may not be due to something that I care about. I want characters to be developed, but I don't want two hours of poorly-paced back story for a 135-minute movie. The following would be a better review.

"This movie is not for everyone because it is paced a bit more slowly than the average. While most of the slow pacing was necessary, there were two or three scenes that were unnecessary to the storyline. This did not bother me because I appreciated that they erred on providing too much detail about the main character rather than not enough. It was the right decision because the story is character-driven rather than effects-driven."

The above review is better because it tells me what I need to know. If the movie description sounds interesting I can get through the three pointless scenes without irritation. If it doesn't, I will probably be put off by having to watch meaningless scenes.

Not Scary

I like a lot of movies in the horror genre, but it splits about 50/50. I am interested in movies that have twisting or intelligent plot lines, and about half of horror movies fit into this mold. I do not really care one way or the other whether a movie is scary or gory, so when people use that as their only criteria it is not useful for me. I know I shouldn't complain about this for horror movies, but people do this for other genres such as thrillers as well.

Political, Religious, or Philosophical Reasoning

This does not happen too much, but sometimes people review a movie based on whether they agree with the message or not. This is not typically helpful, except in very narrow genres like Christian documentary.

Have not Watched the Movie

This is the most surprising. I hate when I see a review that says something to the effect of, "I am so excited that I am going to see this movie next week." No one cares about that.

Attractiveness of Actors/Actresses

That I can recall, I have never watched a movie because I thought someone in the movie was attractive. I would rather watch a movie with a plot I liked but with ugly stars than with a lousy plot and attractive stars.

Disc Was Damaged

I understand why someone would be irritated that they got a cracked or scratched disc and want to take it out on someone. It really only hurts other users who are looking for valid reviews to post a review that simply whines about getting a bad copy of the movie, though.

I am sure there are more, but those are the pet peeves I have had tonight.

penguins and polar bears

Several years ago some of my coworkers and their spouses played Cranium at a casual get together. One of the guys I worked with at the time, and someone who was generally very intelligent, had to answer a true/false question that asked roughly, "Do polar bears eat penguins?" He said they did not and provided an elaborate explanation. If I remember correctly, his reasoning was that penguins are protective of their young and travel in groups, so that they would be dangerous to hunt. While he was correct that polar bears do not hunt penguins his reasoning was faulty. The real reason is that polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere and penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere. The phrase, "Penguins and polar bears," immediately became metaphor in my office for being right despite faulty logic, and I have come to love the concept.

One application of the concept is intellectual. Is a person who has a lot of the right answers, but who makes a lot of logical mistakes intelligent? What if that person is right only because he or she learns the right people to listen to even if he or she does not properly understand those intelligent peoples' logic? Is this person intelligent or not?

One application of the concept is ethical. For example, can a person with seemingly random ethical code be considered ethical for rightly considering murder wrong if he or she has no solid rationale for that belief? To further illustrate this, if a person decided that shooting people at close range was wrong because there is a chance that a splatter of blood will stain his or her clothes, is this person thinking ethically in that he or she believes that shooting someone at close range is wrong? Is the entire value of an ethical code the actual rules or is there significant value in the rationales behind the rules?

One application of the concept that I have posted on before is spiritual. If someone has faith in what is true for all of the wrong reasons is it true faith? As an extension of this question, is it inevitable that the person's false reasoning will undo his or her faith?

There are other applications as well, but they all boil down to the value of the work to get the answer versus the accuracy of the answer. I value the work more, but maybe that is so I can justify being wrong on occasion.

800

This is my 800th post. My tradition when hitting a round number is to write something that indirectly relates to the number. Since was the first area code used for toll-free numbers in the United States (and Canada), today's post is on the concept of free.

My trust issues flare up when I see something that is free. Economically speaking, I am a strong believer that there is no such thing as a free lunch, so I always expect an angle when I see something for free. I think most people are like me to an extent on this, but maybe not to the same degree.

One example was a minor-league baseball game that Golden and I attended with a large group of people. We had "seats" on a grassy berm and a local bank was handing out free seat pads to anyone who would apply for a credit card. Most of the people sitting on the berm took the offer. I could not on principle and because I did not know what that would do to my credit score. I would have purchased the pads even at an inflated price had I had the option, but I would not have taken the "free" pads.

I have another problem with taking free things that I am certain qualifies as a psychological issue, and I am also fairly certain that it is an almost exclusively male issue. I have a very hard time accepting something for free because I do not feel that I have earned it, so I feel mildly indebted. For example, I hate taking free samples of food at the grocery store. I would rather pay the nickle or dime that the sample cost. I know that it does not make much sense, but the ability to pay even on something so small would ease my mind.

In short, I probably don't believe in such a thing as a free lunch because I don't want to.

intelligence and religion

"I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." - Jesus Christ (Matt 11:25-26)

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him." - Paul (1 Cor 1:26-29)

A recent study established a correlation between higher intelligence as measured by IQ and the belief that there is no God. As someone who believes very strongly in God and who cares probably too deeply about intelligence, this was definitely something that I had to give some thought. Things that I think about have a strange tendency to show up on this site, so here it is.

There is one thing that I believe should be noted before I go much further. One of the sacrifices that God expects is the willingness to be considered a fool. I know of no place in Scripture where having a reputation for intelligence is portrayed as Godly. There are places where we are instructed to be wise and intelligent. The difference is that wisdom as detailed by Scripture may not have an actual correlative relationship with intelligence as it is popularly measured. This is part of why I included the Scripture passages above in this post.

There are actually two things that I should note now that I think about it. Statistically speaking, using a mean score is often a great way to skew results. For example, at the time of this writing Wolphram Alpha has the mean income for an individual in the U.S. at $43,460, but the median as $33,190. What accounts for the difference? In this case, the mean is skewed by all of the income made by billionaires and multi-millionaires, but the fact that there are relatively few of them keeps them from strongly impacting the median, so the median is more representative of the population as a whole. Likewise, I expect that the ultimate explanation for the IQ difference is simply that only a minuscule percentage of the very low IQ people are atheists and the rest of the very low IQ people drag down the mean IQ score for those who believe in a god. I would bet that a difference would exist in the median scores, but that it would be notably lower than the difference in the mean scores.

While I am sure there are more, I can think of two potential reasons that atheists and agnostics would score higher on IQ tests. The first potential reason is that the tests are imperfect and incomplete measures of intelligence and the second potential reason is that people who believe in God tend to skew less logical.

Argument #1: IQ Tests Are Imperfect

While IQ tests have correlation to intelligence, I do believe that they are imperfect gauges of intelligence. For one, there are too many types of intelligence for any one test to properly capture. One person I spoke to over the summer while Golden and I were on vacation talked about working at Sandia National Laboratories. He joked about how some of the people there with PhDs could understand Quantum Physics but lacked the practical knowledge to tie their shoes. How do you measure those different types of intelligence? Is the PhD really smarter on the important measures, whatever they may be? Just because the PhD understands abstract concepts better, does that make him or her more qualified to know whether there is a god than the average Joe or Jane?

Also, the results of all tests are colored by any number of factors. For example, I would suspect that visual learners would do better on an IQ test than an auditory learner would. If there are multiple people in the room where the test is given people who have anxiety issues or who have ADHD may score lower than they should for their intelligence level. People who prepare for the test and have a strategy would probably score higher than those who do not, even though those factors may not be strong indicators of relevant intelligence.

Finally, I do not know my own IQ, but I am sure that my score would benefit from the fact that I have always been a good test-taker. If someone is not a good test-taker, he or she will not get the score boost that I would get. This is a natural weakness for any test in properly grading someone's intelligence.

Probably the strongest argument that IQ tests are imperfect are is that there are statistical differences between how people in different ethnic groups perform on the tests. At the least, it should give us pause that a statistically significant number of people of certain ethnicities score higher than people of other ethnicities. If it is bigoted to use IQ tests to assert that one race is less intelligent than people of another (which I believe it is), then it is bigoted to use the IQ tests to assert that people of one religious persuasion are less intelligent than people of another religious persuasion (or lack thereof).

Argument #2: People Who Believe in God Skew Less Logical

Remember that I am a Christian as you read this.

There are a few reasons why people who refuse to believe in God would skew more logical. For one, more people today grew up with parents who believed in a god of some sort than grew up with parents who did not. It takes a certain baseline of logic to reject the foundational religious beliefs that you grew up with, so that means that the people at the very lowest end of the IQ spectrum are most likely to believe what their parents believed. They in turn will drag down the average IQ score for people who believe in God (remember, mean versus median).

Second, a huge reason that someone would become atheist or agnostic is because they cannot find enough empirical evidence that God exists. Scientific types, who would be expected to have higher IQs on average, want to have extensive proof for what they believe in, and the evidence for God is not empirical evidence. God is discovered spiritually or relationally rather than empirically.

Third, in many religious circles an inquisitive mind is a liability rather than an asset. High IQ people are most often inquisitive types who want to challenge things to determine truth. The natural questioning that an inquisitive person will do is rarely encouraged in religious settings unless very specific bounds are placed on the questioning. Many inquisitive people eventually determine that they don't fit in with people who believe in God as they seem more interested in maintaining the status quo than in understanding truth, and so they leave to prop up the IQs of those who do not believe.

Conclusion

In the end, I think there are a lot of little reasons for the IQ difference, but I think the biggest is an issue of self-selection. People tend to congregate with and share the beliefs of those who are like them.

While I do think this study is an indictment of the anti-intellectualism that pervades a lot of elements of the church, our wisdom is supposed to be the kind that comes from God, which often will not show up on an IQ test. God's wisdom is about trusting Him and a high IQ is about which object is the next in the sequence. They just don't always relate to each other.

Update (10/5/2010): There is one further point that I cannot believe that I missed, but could have a strong effect on the average IQ scores for those who believe in a god or the God. Religions, and Christianity in particular, actively target groups of people who are likely to have low average IQs. This is partly because those are the people most likely to be in need. This is also partly because it is easier to create a tract that targets the lowest common denominator than it is to truly tackle difficult issues.