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’.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
As ritual displays of religious adherence began to decrease across Europe, the resulting decline in religiosity has not emerged as a continent-wide atheism.
“As ritual displays of religious adherence began to decrease across Europe, the resulting decline in religiosity has not emerged as a continent-wide atheism (Zuckerman 2007; Lanman 2012a; Kalkman 2014; Lanman 2010).”
From Cultural Evolution of Religion, Spirituality and Ritual: Impacts On Human Cooperation (2024) · cites this paper as Kalkman 2014
Cites
An evaluation of dual-process theories of reasoning
Osman, M. (2004) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/bf03196730 · Cited by 444 · see citing works
Blaming God for our pain: Human suffering and the divine mind
Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2010) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1177/1088868309350299 · Cited by 267 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Cultural Evolution of Religion, Spirituality and Ritual: Impacts On Human Cooperation
McNamara, R. A. (2024) · KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie · doi:10.1007/s11577-024-00937-3 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“As ritual displays of religious adherence began to decrease across Europe, the resulting decline in religiosity has not emerged as a continent-wide atheism (Zuckerman 2007; Lanman 2012a; Kalkman 2014; Lanman 2010).”
Psychological Approaches to Leaving Religion
Messick, K., & Farias, M. (2020) · Handbook of Leaving Religion · doi:10.1163/9789004331471_026 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kalkman, D. P.
- Affiliations
- Australian National University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Kalkman, David Peter
- Venue
- Religion
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2013-10-18
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 72-83
- ISSN
- 0048-721X (ISSN-L)
- 1096-1151
- OpenAlex
- W2038339062
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 4.87
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Religion (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Australian National University
- Monash University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Evolution and Science Education
- Keywords
- atheism, dual-process theory, reflective thinking, cognitive modules, evolution of religion, developmental variation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
