Why do the godless prosper? Modeling the cognitive and coalitional mechanisms that promote atheism.

Abstract

This article offers an affirmative construal of atheism: the attempt to make sense of the world with naturalist explanations and to act sensibly in society following secularist principles (i.e., without relying on supernatural agents or complying with supernatural authorities). After briefly describing the conceptual framework behind this positive conception of a nonreligious worldview, we outline the construction and present the findings of two computational models that simulate some of the cognitive and coalitional mechanisms that engender and nurture religious and nonreligious worldviews. These models allow us to explore the causal dynamics within complex adaptive systems involving (dis)belief in supernatural agents and (dis)affiliation from religious institutions.

Modeling nationalism, religiosity, and threat perception: During the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In other words, religiosity involves the intensification and integration of a hyper-active propensity toward detecting gods as hidden agents and a hyper-active propensity toward protecting in-group norms. We refer to these as “anthropomorphic promiscuity” and “sociographic prudery” respectively (for theoretical background, see [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ].…”

Simulating Secularities: Challenges and Opportunities in the Computational Science of (Non)Religion

“…The practical aspect of this metaethical framework calls for the integration of the philosophical and scientific aspects in a way that avoids moral evasion (by, e.g., appealing to unfalsifiable supernatural revelations about a particular ingroup's moral code) and moral confusion (by, e.g., failing to account for the actual cognitive and moral equipment that is part of our phylogenetic inheritance). We cannot fully understand (much less address) most of the major challenges facing global society, including extreme climate change, excessive consumer capitalism, and escalating cultural conflict, without accounting for the role played by various forms of religious belief and behavior (Shults, 2015;Shults et al, 2018a). Adapting in the Anthropocene will require us to learn new ways to challenge cognitive tendencies that promote superstition and segregation, a task that may be facilitated by adopting depolarizing polices and debiasing strategies (Shults, 2020).…”

An introduction to atheism, agnosticism, and nonreligious worldviews.

“…Importantly, their methodology allows for the systematic investigation of "positive" components to nonreligious belief systems, and for their comparison with other belief systems. Shults, Gore, Lemos, and Wildman (2018) provide the first cognitively informed computational models of the mechanisms that drive the expansion of nonreligious worldviews within a population. They utilize empirical data of the sort with which psychologists and cognitive scientists of religion are familiar, but demonstrate how new computer simulation tools are able to exceed the analytic and predictive capacity of traditional methodologies.…”