Strong secular institutions reduce believers’ need to distrust atheists

Evidence

Despite the American exception, as a rule, and with the usual caveat “all-else-being-equal,” strong secular institutions significantly dampen believers’ distrust of atheists. Nevertheless, cross-cultural studies such as this one, as insightful as they are, have one big weakness: they cannot tell us with certainty the causal direction of the effect. There is always the possibility that some other third variable that we did not think of causes societies to develop strong institutions and causes people who live in these societies to trust atheists. The gold standard for establishing causality is the experiment with random assignment and a control condition. In a series of such experiments led by Will Gervais, we wanted to know if mere reminders of secular authority would reduce distrust of atheists. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 307

We found that, all else being equal, believers from countries with a firmly established secular rule of law showed markedly reduced distrust of atheists compared to believers from countries with weak secular rule of law. In other words, this finding says that two equally fervent believers express different levels of distrust toward atheists depending on whether they live in a society with strong or weak rule of law. … Second, rule of law reduced atheist distrust even after controlling for individuals’ demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, education, and income. More importantly, we found that rule of law remained a significant source of reduced atheist distrust even after we removed the contributions of two known country-level factors that are associated with diminished atheist distrust: human development as measured by the United Nations (combined measure of economic wealth, longevity, and education levels) and individualism. What this means is that believers in countries with strong rule of law distrust atheists less not simply because these countries happen to have high levels of human welfare, and not simply because these countries value the autonomy of individuals and their rights to freely express themselves. Matching countries on human development, individualism, and religiosity levels, those with stronger institutions have believers who are markedly less likely to distrust atheists. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 305

Categorization

• XREF: This is the reader’s core analytical bridge: the Big God mechanism predicts that when secular secular institutions guaranteeing cooperation are strong (as in the novel’s modern state, absent in feudal Japan’s fragmentation), believers should relax their moral vigilance toward outsiders. — connects to: Prosocial religious cohesion inherently requires excluding nonbelievers from trust; Strong secular institutions substitute for and undermine belief in God; Nonbelievers show mild trust toward believers while believers trust only their own (+6 more)
• QUESTION: The finding is correlational across countries, not causal — what countervailing evidence would distinguish ‘belief in big gods sustains large-scale secular cooperation’ from ‘secular rule of law removes the need for religious distrust’ as the direction of causation?
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 307; Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 305

Broader Connections

• Believers distrust atheists less where rule of law is strong #corroborates (0.95)
• An unlikely mechanism reduces atheist distrust even among believers #expands (0.85)
• Religious belief strongly predicts distrust of atheists #complicates (0.75)