| My theory: Everyone has two brains, a "people" brain and a "stuff" brain. Most people use them roughly equally, but some use one more than the other. When we were kids, my sister and I used to argue because she thought that her stuffed animals had feelings, and that birds had conversations about specific things. She was always attributing human emotions to things that didn't have them. Even now, she does it with her cat: if the cat trips and falls and walks away with its head down, my sister will say, "Aww, she's embarrassed!" -- even though cats don't understand embarrassment and the cat is probably just tired. Unsurprisingly, my sister is religious and I'm not. Religion is what happens when people misapply their people brain to thinking about stuff. They get a vague sense that the world is alive, and then explain it in whatever concrete terms their culture provides (God, in our case). Nerdiness is what happens when people misapply their stuff brain to thinking about people. Nerds misinterpret other people because they fail to attribute emotions to them. However, unlike religious people, nerds usually realize at some point that they have a problem and can try to change. Except in extreme cases, religious people suffer no consequences for being wrong, so they have no reason to change. Since women tend to be more interested in people and men more interested in stuff, this also explains why women are more often religious, and men are more often nerds. |