Whether supernatural monitoring drove China’s unification remains historically disputed

Evidence

There has been more confusion and dispute surrounding the role of religion in another massive cultural experiment in history, the unification of China. Did supernatural monitoring play a role in the remarkable scaling up of Chinese society over time? — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 432

Categorization

• QUESTION: The China question directly tests a boundary case of the Big God thesis (a large-scale civilization allegedly without moralizing gods) — worth following to test how far the mechanism generalizes.
• XREF: connects to: Chinese civilization may have scaled up through secular alternatives to religion
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Chinese civilization may have scaled up through secular alternatives to religion

Broader Connections

• Chinese civilization may have scaled up through secular alternatives to religion #complicates (0.82)