Believers hold fluctuating, conflicting views of God’s temperament

Evidence

The third piece of evidence supporting supernatural monitoring deserves deeper discussion, because it has wide-ranging implications for human behavior and society. This evidence takes into account the fact that believers have different, and often fluctuating, opinions about supernatural punishment and rewards. This is also reflected in conflicting scriptural claims about God’s temperament. … Contrast that kind, compassionate God with Deuteronomy 29:20: The Lord will never be willing to forgive him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written in this book will fall upon him and then the Lord will blot out his name under heaven. … The critical question, then, is, does the notion of a kind, forgiving, God make people kind, forgiving, honest, and cooperative, as ideomotor explanations would suggest? Or is a wrathful, punishing God a more effective deterrent of bad behavior, as a supernatural monitoring account would predict? — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 162

Categorization

• XREF: The kind-versus-wrathful God contrast is ripe for the Baumard partner-choice angle: a forgiving God signals willingness to keep the relationship, while a punishing God threatens withdrawal—exactly the choice-space the fumi-e trampling disrupts. — connects to: Believers implicitly represent even an omniscient God as having humanlike mental limits — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 76; Believing in God is inseparable from anthropomorphizing God as a personlike mind — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 77
• QUESTION: Which specific God-image did Rodrigues hold and how did it interact with the fumi-e: was trampling an act of apostasy against a punishing God or a transgression against a forgiving one?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 162

Broader Connections

• Believing in God is inseparable from anthropomorphizing God as a personlike mind #expands (0.82) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 77
• Believers implicitly represent even an omniscient God as having humanlike mental limits #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 76