Cultural learning, not cognitive features, determines which gods people commit to

Evidence

Returning to our three interrelated puzzles, if the features of the belief itself are sufficient to explain the prevalence of belief, then how do people come to believe in, or commit to, the “right” gods (as usually judged by their community)? Why do Christians not worship Zeus or Shiva? Why are Hindus indifferent or hostile toward Allah or Jesus? Although this selective commitment is puzzling if we focus on the features of the belief (all of these deities have the right cognitive features to make them proper gods), it is easily explainable if cultural learning dictates the specific gods people commit to. Cultural learning also explains historical shifts in the status of deities. Gods, like Zeus and Thor, despite having stable cognitive features throughout the ages, can move from a worshipped deity to the fictional character of no longer believed myths and stories if their cultural support base is drained. Last, cultural learning biases explain bafflement at the gods of other cultures. These gods of other faiths, when they make their appearance in a new cultural environment, lack (at least initially) public displays of commitment to them. In the absence of such cultural support, they intuitively arouse skepticism, incredulity, or indifference, unless their introduction is accompanied with powerful displays of commitment by dedicated followers. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 375

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that public displays of commitment determine which gods are credible directly parallels the reader’s framework: the fumi-e ritual works precisely by destroying these public displays, making the God of the priests appear to lack cultural support in Japan. Also connects to Baumard’s partner-choice account of costly religious signals.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The fumi-e as cultural-learning blockade’ — if gods lose credibility when their supporters stop displaying commitment, then a mandatory public apostasy ritual is engineered precisely to drain the cultural support base of Christianity, turning God into a Zeus-like fictional character for the Japanese audience even while Rodrigues’ hermeneutics of self-gaze keeps belief alive privately.