Disbelief requires deliberate effort against natural cognitive dispositions.

Evidence

Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions—hardly the easiest ideology to propagate. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 575

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Crucial for the reader’s fumi-e analysis: if apostasy requires effortful cognitive work, a public trampling ritual must do heavy social-psychological lifting to overcome default theism—it targets the social expression and partner-choice signal, not the underlying intuition.
• QUESTION: Given disbelief is effortful and rare, what made millions in secularizing societies overcome this? What environmental conditions flipped the cost-benefit?

Related

• Religious thought defaults while disbelief requires deliberate cognitive effort (similarity 0.92)
• Disbelief does not always require effortful rejection of intuitive theism. (similarity 0.86)
• Atheism has multiple independent causal pathways, not one (similarity 0.82)
• Religious disbelief is linked to a stable analytic cognitive style. (similarity 0.82)
• Deliberative System 2 thinking introduces doubt and can override religious intuitions (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief persists through multiple independent sustaining mechanisms (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (similarity 0.81)
• Belief and disbelief arise through the same four cognitive pathways. (similarity 0.81)
• Disbelief arises through four distinct psychological and cultural paths (similarity 0.81)
• People adopt religious beliefs backed by credible public displays (similarity 0.80)
• Inducing a merely analytic thinking style lowers stated belief in God. (similarity 0.80)
• Atheism lacks the intuitive support that religious belief enjoys. (similarity 0.80)
• Religious belief rests on ordinary cognition that predates motivational influence. (similarity 0.79)
• Ordinary cognition, not special modules, produces religious beliefs (similarity 0.79)
• Cognitive disfluency reduces religious belief across all conviction levels (similarity 0.79)