Rescuing the Baby from the Bathwater: Continuing the Conversation on Gender, Risk, and Religiosity

In this short response, we selectively address some of the key issues and criticisms raised by our esteemed commenters. First, we clarify our standpoint vis à vis “biological” arguments, underscoring that our article is not to be read as hostile to all forms of explanations that incorporate biology into the explanation of religious behavior and belief, but only against those explanations that attempt to imply that socialization plays no role (“the it’s all biology” argument). Second, we defend the explanatory scope of our proposal by showing that our argument is not vulnerable to the “simpler” counterexplanation proposed by Hoffmann. Finally, we contextualize where our contributions fit in terms of more encompassing arguments regarding the operation of gender and gendering processes as multicausal, multilevel phenomena, as well as explicitly stating our perspective on the role that “risk” should play in the explanation of religious behavior and belief.