The cognitive by-product theory of humans’ religious proclivities holds that standard cognitive development facilitates the acquisition of religious representations and practices (Boyer Reference Boyer2001). Ideas about agents possessing counterintuitive properties and forms of putative interaction with those agents will regularly arise in human populations, on the basis of susceptibilities of diverse maturationally natural cognitive processes that enjoy neither a logical nor a psychological unity (McCauley Reference McCauley2011).
The authors and others (e.g., Talmont-Kaminski Reference Talmont-Kaminski2013) have raised an important qualification to the cognitive naturalness thesis about religion, pointing to the steady decline of religiosity among people in secularized societies – for example, in northern Europe. These researchers suggest that secularized societies indirectly but substantially check people's interests in religion.
Secularized societies ensure that virtually all of their citizens have their basic material needs met. (As a result, these societies have low levels of income inequality.) Citizens live in relatively safe, secure environments. When societies with adequate material resources develop governments with trustworthy institutions, legal systems, police forces, and more, which monitor human conduct in ways similar to the oversight that the gods are supposed to carry out, their citizens’ interests in the gods decrease dramatically. Norenzayan et al. suggest that such developments prompt an indifference to religion that constitutes one of the prominent routes to atheism, which they dub “apatheism.” (sect. 7.3, para. 1).
Norenzayan et al. concede that the welfare, security, and stability that secularized societies engender have been rare in history and remain the exception even today. They allow that religions that forge parochial altruism continue to prosper wherever humans face social or political upheaval (ISIS in Syria) or natural disasters (Ebola in Liberia) or perilous or insufficient material support (throughout most of the third world). Still, noting evidence from studies of priming in economic games, surveys around the world, and various natural experiments, they propose that “it appears that God and government are both culturally and psychologically interchangeable.” (sect. 7.3, para. 5).
By-product theorists do not hold that everyone is naturally religious. Among the reasons for their caution is the variability concerning the maturationally natural cognitive dispositions that inform humans’ appetite for religion. (The authors note, for example, “mindblind atheism” [sect. 7.3, para.2] resulting from deficits in theory of mind.) These observations about the impact of secularization on religious proclivities illuminate the profound role that material and cultural conditions can have on the tuning of humans’ maturationally natural cognitive systems and on their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Norenzayan et al.’s contention, however, that gods and good governments are psychologically and culturally interchangeable raises questions about the details of both the relevant psychological and cultural mechanisms.
Clarifying the means by which material and cultural conditions influence the psychological and cultural viability of ideas and practices, including religious ideas and practices, involving agents with counterintuitive properties will enrich research on the cognitive bases and the cultural evolution of religion. It is worthwhile to explore whether the processes of secularization interact with the psychological and cultural mechanisms on which prosocial religions rely and how uniform, stable, and lasting the psychological and cultural effects of secularization are. Following are a couple of matters that may merit consideration.
First, what at the psychological level enables secularization to undo religiosity across entire human societies (e.g., in the Scandinavian countries)? The authors hold the view that secularized societies produce conditions in which religious ideas are unlikely to thrive. If their satisfaction and security depends upon someone other than the gods, citizens appear less receptive to religious sales pitches. Does secularization also inevitably neutralize the forces driving the generation of such ideas in the first place (and, if so, how?), so that, eventually, they may not even bubble up in the relevant populations? This raises a question about the famed secularized populations of northern Europe. Have the measures researchers employed demonstrated a pervasive deflation of religiosity or have they only furnished evidence of the waning of its traditional expressions? The national churches attract few, but has secularization in these countries also squelched traffic in ideas and practices concerning ancestors and angels, ghosts and golems, fairies and leprechauns, saints and spirits, and vampires, witches, and zombies or representations of animals, plants, objects, or places possessing counterintuitive properties?
Second, for the members of secularized societies do analogues exist of soldiers’ experiences in foxholes, in which allegedly no one remains an atheist? The list of contingencies capable of disrupting a society's safety and security is long and includes problems for which no government can ever be adequately prepared. The devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, constitute a natural test. The New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a longitudinal study of New Zealanders’ views since 2009, showed that the half-century trend of increasing secularization and of decreasing religious affiliation among New Zealanders by roughly 1% per year was reversed among Christchurch residents and among those who reported that the earthquakes affected their lives (Bulbulia Reference Bulbulia2013; Sibley & Bulbulia Reference Sibley and Bulbulia2012). The more than 3% increase in religious affiliation among this population contrasted with the continued decreasing religiosity among New Zealanders overall during this period. Reversals of the shrinking religiosity characteristic of secularized populations may be no more than a natural disaster away. It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that such disasters are often called “acts of God.”
Prolonged disasters (e.g., climate change) may well point to a vulnerability of secularization (Diamond Reference Diamond2005). This seems less clear in the case of religion. In support of their interchangeability thesis, Norenzayan et al. cite experiments (Kay et al. Reference Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan and Laurin2008) in which “experimental manipulations … that lower faith in … (God or the government) lead to subsequent increases in faith in the other.” (sect. 7.3, para. 5) That, of course, applies only in the few situations in history in which confidence in secular institutions has been a viable possibility. In the vast majority of settings where religion was, basically, the only option, catastrophe provoked quests for more or better religion. By contrast, in the face of outright catastrophe, either collective or individual, the failure of secular means to preserve tranquility seems less likely to provoke a quest for more thorough secularization.
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The cognitive by-product theory of humans’ religious proclivities holds that standard cognitive development facilitates the acquisition of religious representations and practices (Boyer Reference Boyer2001). Ideas about agents possessing counterintuitive properties and forms of putative interaction with those agents will regularly arise in human populations, on the basis of susceptibilities of diverse maturationally natural cognitive processes that enjoy neither a logical nor a psychological unity (McCauley Reference McCauley2011).
The authors and others (e.g., Talmont-Kaminski Reference Talmont-Kaminski2013) have raised an important qualification to the cognitive naturalness thesis about religion, pointing to the steady decline of religiosity among people in secularized societies – for example, in northern Europe. These researchers suggest that secularized societies indirectly but substantially check people's interests in religion.
Secularized societies ensure that virtually all of their citizens have their basic material needs met. (As a result, these societies have low levels of income inequality.) Citizens live in relatively safe, secure environments. When societies with adequate material resources develop governments with trustworthy institutions, legal systems, police forces, and more, which monitor human conduct in ways similar to the oversight that the gods are supposed to carry out, their citizens’ interests in the gods decrease dramatically. Norenzayan et al. suggest that such developments prompt an indifference to religion that constitutes one of the prominent routes to atheism, which they dub “apatheism.” (sect. 7.3, para. 1).
Norenzayan et al. concede that the welfare, security, and stability that secularized societies engender have been rare in history and remain the exception even today. They allow that religions that forge parochial altruism continue to prosper wherever humans face social or political upheaval (ISIS in Syria) or natural disasters (Ebola in Liberia) or perilous or insufficient material support (throughout most of the third world). Still, noting evidence from studies of priming in economic games, surveys around the world, and various natural experiments, they propose that “it appears that God and government are both culturally and psychologically interchangeable.” (sect. 7.3, para. 5).
By-product theorists do not hold that everyone is naturally religious. Among the reasons for their caution is the variability concerning the maturationally natural cognitive dispositions that inform humans’ appetite for religion. (The authors note, for example, “mindblind atheism” [sect. 7.3, para.2] resulting from deficits in theory of mind.) These observations about the impact of secularization on religious proclivities illuminate the profound role that material and cultural conditions can have on the tuning of humans’ maturationally natural cognitive systems and on their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Norenzayan et al.’s contention, however, that gods and good governments are psychologically and culturally interchangeable raises questions about the details of both the relevant psychological and cultural mechanisms.
Clarifying the means by which material and cultural conditions influence the psychological and cultural viability of ideas and practices, including religious ideas and practices, involving agents with counterintuitive properties will enrich research on the cognitive bases and the cultural evolution of religion. It is worthwhile to explore whether the processes of secularization interact with the psychological and cultural mechanisms on which prosocial religions rely and how uniform, stable, and lasting the psychological and cultural effects of secularization are. Following are a couple of matters that may merit consideration.
First, what at the psychological level enables secularization to undo religiosity across entire human societies (e.g., in the Scandinavian countries)? The authors hold the view that secularized societies produce conditions in which religious ideas are unlikely to thrive. If their satisfaction and security depends upon someone other than the gods, citizens appear less receptive to religious sales pitches. Does secularization also inevitably neutralize the forces driving the generation of such ideas in the first place (and, if so, how?), so that, eventually, they may not even bubble up in the relevant populations? This raises a question about the famed secularized populations of northern Europe. Have the measures researchers employed demonstrated a pervasive deflation of religiosity or have they only furnished evidence of the waning of its traditional expressions? The national churches attract few, but has secularization in these countries also squelched traffic in ideas and practices concerning ancestors and angels, ghosts and golems, fairies and leprechauns, saints and spirits, and vampires, witches, and zombies or representations of animals, plants, objects, or places possessing counterintuitive properties?
Second, for the members of secularized societies do analogues exist of soldiers’ experiences in foxholes, in which allegedly no one remains an atheist? The list of contingencies capable of disrupting a society's safety and security is long and includes problems for which no government can ever be adequately prepared. The devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, constitute a natural test. The New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a longitudinal study of New Zealanders’ views since 2009, showed that the half-century trend of increasing secularization and of decreasing religious affiliation among New Zealanders by roughly 1% per year was reversed among Christchurch residents and among those who reported that the earthquakes affected their lives (Bulbulia Reference Bulbulia2013; Sibley & Bulbulia Reference Sibley and Bulbulia2012). The more than 3% increase in religious affiliation among this population contrasted with the continued decreasing religiosity among New Zealanders overall during this period. Reversals of the shrinking religiosity characteristic of secularized populations may be no more than a natural disaster away. It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that such disasters are often called “acts of God.”
Prolonged disasters (e.g., climate change) may well point to a vulnerability of secularization (Diamond Reference Diamond2005). This seems less clear in the case of religion. In support of their interchangeability thesis, Norenzayan et al. cite experiments (Kay et al. Reference Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan and Laurin2008) in which “experimental manipulations … that lower faith in … (God or the government) lead to subsequent increases in faith in the other.” (sect. 7.3, para. 5) That, of course, applies only in the few situations in history in which confidence in secular institutions has been a viable possibility. In the vast majority of settings where religion was, basically, the only option, catastrophe provoked quests for more or better religion. By contrast, in the face of outright catastrophe, either collective or individual, the failure of secular means to preserve tranquility seems less likely to provoke a quest for more thorough secularization.