Explaining Nordic atheism: How cultural learning mechanisms predict atheism in Nordic cultural contexts
Principal Investigators
Dr. Valerie van Mulukom
Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations
Coventry University (UK)
Dr. Anne Lundahl Mauritsen
Department for the Study of Religion
Institute of Culture and Society
Aarhus University (DK)
Research Associates
Roosa Haimila
University of Helsinki
Dr. Sara Evelina Lundmark
Uppsala University
Dr. Elisabeth Tveito Johnsen
Faculty of Theology
University of Oslo
Start and end dates: 1 November 2022 – 31 October 2023
Award: £76,168
Over the last decade, researchers in the cognitive science of religion have started to converge on the idea that religious beliefs are adaptive, and as such, a product of evolved human psychology. This raises the question of how we can explain the presence of atheism around the world — if religious beliefs come naturally and intuitively as an adaptive trait, then whence religious non-belief? We propose, in line with recent evolutionary theories of atheism, that atheistic beliefs, like religious beliefs, are adaptive worldview beliefs made possible by evolved cognitive apparatus, and shaped by one’s local cultural context through cultural learning mechanisms.
In this project, we empirically test this thesis through an examination of the relevant cultural contexts of the Nordic countries. In doing so, we propose new cultural learning mechanisms of belief, and test them together with cognitive factors through a survey with large, representative samples from the Nordic countries, thus providing novel insight into the relative importance of these different transmission factors. Moreover, by employing a worldview approach, atheism will be investigated not just as a lack of belief in God, but also as part of a broader secular worldview. This will further allow us to uncover different types of atheism.
Our research questions are: (1) Given the cultural contexts of the Nordic countries — in particular with regards to religion and atheism — what are the likely cultural transmission mechanisms of Nordic religious belief and nonbelief?; (2) Do these cultural contexts and cultural transmission mechanisms explain atheism in the Nordic countries over and above cognitive antecedents?; (3) Do these pathways consisting of cultural and cognitive predictive factors differ between different types of atheism (i.e., clusters of secular worldview beliefs)?
We will use a ‘natural experiment’ methodology (Willard & Cingl, 2017) to address our research questions, whereby we will compare individual survey responses from the highly secular Nordic countries, which have different levels of belief in God but are highly similar in many respects (e.g., culturally, socioeconomically), and importantly differ on a number of key cultural context variables concerning religion and atheism.
Our research investigates exactly which cultural antecedents — which differ between the examined countries and which are influenced by cultural learning biases — can explain the country differences in religious belief. An example of a cultural antecedent is church service attendance, which encourages religious belief through the cultural learning bias that we learn from people who engage such credibility-enhancing behaviours.
Summarising, we aim to extend recent evolutionary theories of the causes of atheism through (i) the examination of a variety of secular beliefs through a worldview approach, (ii) novel measures of cultural learning mechanisms of religious beliefs, (iii) measuring cultural learning mechanisms of atheistic worldview beliefs for the first time, and (iv) novel cultural contexts, the four Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
