Strong secular welfare institutions make religion socially unnecessary.

Evidence

I now turn to two additional paths to atheism, apatheism and InCREDulous atheism. Earlier, we saw that religion declines as societies develop strong institutions that take on the social functions of prosocial religions. Equally important, as social and economic conditions improve, societies become, in the words of Pipa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, existentially secure. Life expectancy and income levels increase, and with better nutrition and health care, infant mortality becomes a thing of the past. Moreover, with unemployment and retirement support, universal medical care, as well as poverty reduction strategies, people are rescued by social safety nets in times of trouble or uncertainty. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 609

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: If strong institutions substitute for prosocial religion’s cooperative function, does the fumi-e ritual represent the inverse — institutions weaponizing the very mechanism religion normally serves?
• XREF: Builds directly on the Big God/watchful-gods mechanism — state institutions replace supernatural watchers as guarantors of cooperation.

Related

• Strong state institutions and existential security replace religion’s functions (similarity 0.87)
• Secular institutions can replace religion’s community-building and cooperation functions (similarity 0.86)
• Strong secular institutions substitute for and undermine belief in God (similarity 0.86)
• Effective secular institutions drive religious decline by taking over its function. (similarity 0.84)
• Large atheist welfare states can replicate religion’s pro-social effects without gods (similarity 0.84)
• Strong secular institutions can substitute for watchful gods in enforcing morality. (similarity 0.84)
• Secular governments and religious belief serve interchangeable functions, so strong states supplant gods. (similarity 0.84)
• Strong welfare states with stable institutions erode religious belief (similarity 0.84)
• Secular societies climbed the ladder of religion and then kicked it away (similarity 0.83)
• Secular cooperative societies emerged through institutions that displaced religion (similarity 0.83)
• Religiosity declines as existential security and economic equality rise (similarity 0.83)
• Strong secular institutions raise trust and cooperation for believers and nonbelievers alike (similarity 0.82)
• Religious belief withers when governments provide the cooperation religion once supplied. (similarity 0.82)
• Secular societies reached large-scale cooperation through religion then discarded it (similarity 0.82)
• Divine and secular authority are inseparable in explaining belief (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Strong secular institutions substitute for and undermine belief in God #corroborates (0.95) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 624
• Secular institutions replace religion as the main motivator of prosocial behavior. #expands (0.95) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 190
• Secular welfare states displaced religion by replicating its cooperative functions #expands (0.90) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 54