Societal existential security and equality predict reduced religiosity

Evidence

These are exactly the changes that some countries, particularly in Northern and Western Europe, underwent over the last 100 years. There is strong evidence that this constellation of social forces that level life’s playing field precipitate religion’s decline. Norris and Inglehart report two key pieces of evidence that support this claim: nations with stronger existential security are less religious by a large margin; and over time, as existential security improves in a given society, religiosity declines in step. Closely related to existential security, cross-cultural comparisons show that societies with more economic equality—that is, with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth—are also less religious, even after a host of other economic and demographic factors, such as gross domestic product, are accounted for. These patterns are seen even within the United States. Psychologists Kurt Gray and Dan Wegner surveyed life conditions state by state, such as rates of infant mortality, cancer deaths, the prevalence of infectious diseases, and the incidence of violent crime. They found that where there is less human misery, there is also less religiosity. Combined with strong secular institutions that keep the cooperative engines going, existential security is the nemesis of religion. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 610

Categorization

• QUESTION: Norris and Inglehart present two correlational evidences — worth chasing whether directionality/natural experiments resolve whether security causes decline or both follow a third cause.
• XREF: The ‘existential security as nemesis of religion’ thesis is a rival to the Big-God prosocial explanation the reader is tracing — potential contradiction to reconcile in the cross-source argument.