Secular substitutes can replace Big Gods without undermining the pattern

Evidence

The idea in this book that groups with belief in powerful supernatural monitors scaled up and eclipsed other groups does not say that supernatural monitoring is the only mechanism that can push groups to expand. Perhaps the Chinese managed to create secular alternatives to religion earlier and more successfully than Western civilization. That would be interesting and important, but not incompatible with the idea of Big Gods pushing groups to expand. Either way, the general pattern of the argument would remain if it turns out that supernatural monitoring was not as central to the formation of Chinese civilization as for others. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 438

Categorization

• XREF: The secular-alternatives possibility parallels the reader’s Japan case: state institutions (fumi-e, Tokugawa administration) functioning as secular surrogates for religious monitoring.