Distrust of atheists stems from watching-God beliefs, not ingroup defense.

Evidence

First, we have found that people who believe in God, but report having no religious affiliation (and therefore no religious ingroup to defend against moral threats), still distrust atheists. And even in this group of nonaffiliated individuals, greater belief in God still predicts greater distrust of atheists. Second, we have found that concerns about supernatural monitoring explain why believers distrust atheists. These concerns are basic to our explanations focusing on supernatural monitoring, but wholly absent from an approach that emphasizes threats to group morality. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 293

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the reader’s Norenzayan ‘Big God’ mechanism: distrust tracks belief in supernatural surveillance itself, not group membership — the exact mechanism Rodrigues’ omniscient-gaze dilemma dramatizes.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the crux finding: it isolates supernatural-monitoring beliefs (not religious affiliation, not ingroup loyalty) as the causal driver of atheist distrust, falsifying the competing ingroup-threat explanation — precisely the discrimination the reader’s analytical framework needs.