Secular institutions substitute for supernatural monitoring by enabling trust in strangers.

Evidence

Historically, beliefs and practices that revolved around Big Gods were the driving force behind large cooperative social groups. But in the most secularized corners of the West, and other parts of the world such as in East Asia, an elaborate but fragile set of norms and institutions have emerged that enforce cooperation and encourage trust among strangers. If you suspect that someone is stealing from you, you call the police. If you have a financial dispute with a stranger, you go to an independent court. Trusting the institutions means you can also trust the strangers who obey these institutions. More trust means lower transaction costs and more mutual benefits, which creates a virtuous cycle of trust and cooperation. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 553

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly the mechanism the reader is testing against Rodrigues’s Japan: secular Big Government displacing Big God surveillance.
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘virtuous cycle of trust and cooperation’ as institutional rather than supernatural.

Related

• Secular institutions substitute for Big Gods by enforcing stranger cooperation (similarity 0.94)
• Strong secular institutions raise trust and cooperation for believers and nonbelievers alike (similarity 0.86)
• Strong secular rule of law sustains trust and cooperation without religion (similarity 0.86)
• Secular institutions and watchful gods are interchangeable in enforcing cooperation and trust (similarity 0.86)
• Supernatural monitoring by any religion can extend trust beyond one’s own community (similarity 0.85)
• Gods and governments may be interchangeable enforcers of cooperation (similarity 0.85)
• Religious belief withers when governments provide the cooperation religion once supplied. (similarity 0.83)
• Belief in a supernatural monitor lowers the cost of trusting strangers in trade networks (similarity 0.83)
• Secular institutions can replace religion’s community-building and cooperation functions (similarity 0.82)
• Effective secular monitoring can erode the root cause of atheist distrust. (similarity 0.82)
• Surveillance alone cannot substitute for religion; only trusted secular authority does. (similarity 0.82)
• Secular rule of law substitutes for religious monitoring of believers (similarity 0.82)
• Strong secular institutions can substitute for watchful gods in enforcing morality. (similarity 0.82)
• Secular institutions may reduce believers’ distrust of atheists by substituting for divine monitoring (similarity 0.82)
• Big Gods substituted for courts and police in binding strangers into cooperation (similarity 0.82)