Omniscient watchful gods enabled cooperation among anonymous strangers

Evidence

In this book, I present an argument that solves both riddles simultaneously by considering that they gave mutual rise to the prosocial religions and large-scale cooperation. Prosocial religions, with their Big Gods who watch, intervene, and demand hard-to-fake loyalty displays, facilitated the rise of cooperation in large groups of anonymous strangers. In turn, these expanding groups took their prosocial religious beliefs and practices with them, further ratcheting up large-scale cooperation in a runaway process of cultural evolution. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 43

Categorization

• XREF: This is the exact ‘Big God’ mechanism the reader is tracing through Father Rodrigues in Silence — the watchful omniscient gaze that enforces moral behavior at scale.
• DEFINE: Defines the causal core of the Big Gods thesis: mutual rise of prosocial religion and large-group cooperation.