Abstract
The abandonment of supernatural religious beliefs and rituals seems to occur quite easily in some contexts, but post-supernaturalist cultures require a specific set of conditions that are difficult to produce and sustain on a large scale and thus are historically rare. Despite the worldwide resurgence of supernaturalist religion, some subcultures reliably produce people who deny the existence of supernatural entities. This social phenomenon has evoked competing explanations, many of which enjoy empirical support. We synthesize six of the most influential social-science explanations, demonstrating that they provide complementary perspectives on a complex causal architecture. We incorporate this theoretical synthesis into a computer simulation, identifying conditions under which the predominant attitude toward supernaturalism in a population shifts from acceptance to rejection (and vice versa). The model suggests that the conditions for producing widespread rejection of supernatural worldviews are highly specific and difficult to produce and sustain. When those conditions combine, which is historically rare, a stable social equilibrium emerges within which post-supernaturalist worldviews are widespread; however, this equilibrium is easier to disrupt than equilibria whose cohesion is stabilized by supernatural religion due to persistent cognitive tendencies toward supernaturalism in evolved human minds.
Highlights
In Scandinavian and Northern European nations today, as well as most coastal regions of the United States and many parts of Australia and New Zealand, a growing number of individuals do not believe in supernatural entities and reject religion in general
We argue that some aspects of these supplyside theories can be understood as complementary to – and as competitors of – theories that emphasize the demand-side of religious participation
The point of FOReST and of this paper is theoretical in nature, seeking to demonstrate the possibility and usefulness of a synthesis of social-science theories of supernatural religious and post-supernatural secular transitions and to identify the key factors that determine how these transitions unfold
Summary
In Scandinavian and Northern European nations today, as well as most coastal regions of the United States and many parts of Australia and New Zealand, a growing number of individuals do not believe in supernatural entities and reject religion in general. The most ambitious attempt so far to produce a unified theoretical model is Stolz (2009), where correlations between aspects of some of the theories above (and some others) are explored using multi-level multiple regression modeling, though Stolz doesn’t take account of post-supernaturalism as a dependent variable. Such integrative attempts are rare, and none developed to date illustrates concretely how the causal elements of all these theories can function together. It is important to note that we selected these six theories before trying to integrate them, and let the chips fall where they may as to whether integration would be possible and whether the meaning of the resulting synthesis would tell us anything interesting about transitions between supernatural religion and post-supernaturalist secularity
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