Elevated gods better serve as overseers because height enables unobstructed watching

Evidence

Indeed, studies show that vertical position and thoughts of God go together in the minds of believers. In one study, psychologists showed participants words such as God, Divine, and Lord, either at the top or at the bottom of a computer screen. Participants recognized God faster when God was up, suggesting that believers intuitively see God as being high up. From the social engineering perspective of constructing cooperative societies, it is easy to see why gods who enjoy an elevated position are better cultural candidates to become supernatural watchers than “lower” gods who have obstructed views. From high up, they can more easily see what’s going on “down below,” in the realm of the mortals. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 121

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s framing of Rodriguez’s God as an omniscient watcher — the ‘vertical position’ intuition reinforces why an all-seeing God sits up high.
• QUESTION: Could the fumi-e ritual be read partly as forcing the trampler to invert this god-below-you vertical schema?