Atheism has multiple independent causal pathways, not one

Evidence

This hypothesis strikes me as partly true, but incomplete. First, atheism is more widespread and enduring than expected if it was merely driven by effortful rejection of intuitive theism. Moreover, while some nonbelievers, some of the time, may be working hard to overcome theistic intuitions, disbelief does not appear to always require hard or explicit cognitive effort. Many nonbelievers simply do not spend time thinking about religious ideas all that much. Third, this view is too narrow to describe all the different kinds of disbelief that we see in the world—in other words, reflective rejection of theism might be just one flavor of atheism. Once we combine insights about cognitive intuitions such as mind-body dualism and mind reading, with an understanding of cultural learning and cultural evolution, we see that there is, actually, not one atheism but multiple flavors of atheism arising from multiple independent pathways. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 578

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Big-God/partner-choice frame: distinguishes belief’s pathways (commitment, credible display) from disbelief’s, directly relevant to why Rodrigues’s apostasy terrain works. Also parallels Pascal Boyer’s religion-as-byproduct work.