Belief and disbelief arise through the same four cognitive pathways.

Evidence

For someone to believe in a given deity, he or she must (1) form intuitive mental representations of supernatural agents: (2) be motivated to commit to supernatural agents as real and relevant sources of meaning, comfort, and control; (3) have had prior cultural exposure to the particular deities suggesting that of all the mentally representable supernatural agents, these specific deities should be believed in as real and important; and (4) maintain this commitment without further cognitive processing that could undermine intuitive beliefs. This framework leads to the conclusion that belief and disbelief share the same pathways, and that alterations to any of these four basic pathways could encourage disbelief. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 579

Categorization

• DEFINE: Cleanly names the four components that jointly constitute commitment to a deity — the framework the reader can map the fumi-e trampling onto.
• XREF: Feeds the cross-source integration with Baumard’s partner-choice model (pathway 2, commitment as credible signal) and Norenzayan’s own Big God mechanism. — connects to: Three independent labs converged that religious belief tracks intuitive thinking. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 600
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 579