Three cognitive routes to atheism: a dual-process account

Abstract

According to recent cognitive explanations of religiosity, belief in supernatural agents is a result of species-universal cognitive modules operating in environments similar enough to those these modules evolved in. Less attention has been given to the cognitive basis of atheism. The author brings together three ways in which atheism could arise that are a priori compatible with recent cognitive explanations of religiosity. One way is reflective and involves the effortful overturning of unreflective modular cognition. The other two ways are unreflective and involve, firstly, the operation of modular cognition in evolutionarily novel environments, and secondly, developmental variation of modular cognition. The author argues that there is evidence for both a reflective route and at least one unreflective route to atheism, and that reflective and unreflective causes probably interact with each other. Consequently, he argues that the cognitive profiles of atheists are not necessarily more reflective than those of believers, nor any less ‘natural’.