Secular institutions may reduce believers’ distrust of atheists by substituting for divine monitoring

Evidence

What I have in mind is something much more interesting and important. It is interesting because it is an unlikely source of prejudice reduction that flows directly from the logic of the analysis presented here, but does not easily flow from other perspectives; and it is important because it leads to the decline of atheist distrust among believers—the very group that is most likely to hold exclusionary attitudes toward atheists in the first place. … That unlikely source is effective secular institutions. What I mean by this is cultural exposure to institutions and mechanisms such as courts, contracts, and police that have emerged in some modern societies and that are designed to monitor human behavior and make people accountable. The logic of the argument is as follows: if atheists are seen as untrustworthy because they do not believe in supernatural monitoring, then perhaps exposure to secular monitoring might erode the root cause of atheist distrust—the religious anxiety that atheists are moral wildcards because they are unconstrained by any kind of social monitoring. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 300

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: This is the central analytical claim for the reader’s Big God / fumi-e integration project—whether secular monitoring genuinely substitutes for supernatural monitoring psychologically.
• XREF: Directly connects to Baumard’s partner-choice mechanism and the fumi-e ritual as monitoring-destruction; also parallels the reader’s existing framework of omniscient gaze enforcing behavior.
• SEED: Potential essay angle: if gods and governments are interchangeable as moral monitors, then rituals like the fumi-e that destroy monitoring undermine both forms of accountability—a secular parallel to forced apostasy exists in state surveillance and loyalty oaths.

Related

• Effective secular monitoring can erode the root cause of atheist distrust. (similarity 0.93)
• Strong secular institutions can substitute for watchful gods in enforcing morality. (similarity 0.87)
• Surveillance alone cannot substitute for religion; only trusted secular authority does. (similarity 0.85)
• Supernatural monitoring beliefs drive atheist distrust even without ingroup membership (similarity 0.84)
• Secular governments and religious belief serve interchangeable functions, so strong states supplant gods. (similarity 0.84)
• Gods and governments may be interchangeable enforcers of cooperation (similarity 0.83)
• Reminders of effective secular authority specifically reduce distrust of atheists (similarity 0.83)
• Strong secular rule of law sustains trust and cooperation without religion (similarity 0.82)
• Secular institutions substitute for supernatural monitoring by enabling trust in strangers. (similarity 0.82)
• Surveillance only substitutes for religious authority where the state itself is trusted (similarity 0.81)
• Belief in a supernatural monitor lowers the cost of trusting strangers in trade networks (similarity 0.81)
• Supernatural monitoring by any religion can extend trust beyond one’s own community (similarity 0.81)
• Strong secular institutions raise trust and cooperation for believers and nonbelievers alike (similarity 0.81)
• Anti-atheist distrust stems from the belief that atheists lack supernatural accountability (similarity 0.81)
• Secular rule of law substitutes for religious monitoring of believers (similarity 0.81)