Believers read explicit atheism as a public signal of untrustworthiness

Evidence

The key insight in explaining the puzzle of anti-atheist prejudice lies in understanding religion’s role in trust and cooperation. Atheists might think of their lack of belief as a private matter about a metaphysical issue; believers, on the other hand, see atheism as a public matter, a threat to cooperation and trust. If sincere belief in a morally concerned deity serves as a reliable cooperative signal, it follows that those who explicitly deny the existence of God are inadvertently sending the wrong signal: they are being perceived as subversive noncooperators by the religious. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 245

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Norenzayan’s Big God mechanism and the reader’s framework: denial of the omniscient gaze is read as failure of the moral-enforcement device, hence as a free-rider threat. Also parallels Baumard’s partner-choice logic.
• DEFINE: Establishes the crucial asymmetry — atheism as private metaphysical stance versus public cooperative signal — that anchors the whole analytical argument.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that belief in God functions as a public commitment device, such that its denial is socially legible as free-riding regardless of actual behavior, is a paradigm-shifting reframe of anti-atheist prejudice.