Public displays of costly commitment determine which gods gain believers

Evidence

In other words, gods lack power if potential converts see little evidence of social proof—passionate devotion to them by zealous followers. Our answer can be found, once again, in the cultural learning biases that direct people to selectively commit to certain supernatural agents but not others. If religious actions speak louder than words (the fifth principle of Big Gods), then it follows that witnessing actions that convey genuine commitment to a particular deity—painful or costly rituals, restrictions on behaviors, and sacrifice of time, effort, and wealth—will in turn lead to greater belief in and commitment to this god. Conversely, the absence of such public displays erodes commitment without necessarily disturbing the intuitive building blocks that allow people to conceive of a particular god. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 371

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This is the exact mechanism supporting the reader’s bridge to Silence’s fumi-e scene: the Japanese authorities’ public trampling ritual works precisely because it destroys the visible social proof of commitment to the Christian god.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports and extends the argument in ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — costly ritual sacrifice functions as the credibility display that generates and sustains belief.

Related

• Public displays of devotion sustain belief in a god while their absence erodes it (similarity 0.93)
• Publicly costly acts of devotion serve to convert nonbelievers, not just reassure fellow believers (similarity 0.85)
• People adopt religious beliefs backed by credible public displays (similarity 0.83)
• Cultural learning, not cognitive features, determines which gods people commit to (similarity 0.83)
• Cultural learning biases explain passionate commitment to some gods but not others (similarity 0.82)
• Costly religious displays evolved as honest signals of group commitment. (similarity 0.82)
• Costly signaling cannot explain why nonbelievers find religious displays costly (similarity 0.81)
• Credible displays of religious devotion trigger belief cascades and group-level competitive advantage (similarity 0.81)
• Costly public displays reliably signal otherwise unfakeable genuine belief (similarity 0.81)
• Belief-commitment differs fundamentally from mere mental representation of gods (similarity 0.80)
• Costly behaviors transmit beliefs because they prove honest commitment (similarity 0.80)
• Costly religious displays signal hard-to-fake commitment to group beliefs, like romantic love signals fidelity. (similarity 0.79)
• Hard-to-fake devotion rituals screened out religious freeloaders (similarity 0.79)
• Belief-commitment, not mental representation alone, distinguishes worshipped gods (similarity 0.79)
• Costly religious signals induce cooperation without spreading belief (similarity 0.78)