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Previous research has found that in conditions of high inequality, individuals appear to express higher levels of religious engagement. However, areas where there is high inequality often also have high levels of deprivation, making it unclear as to whether it is inequality or deprivation that drives the positive association between inequality and religiosity. The original aims of this thesis were to investigate the relationship between religiosity and inequality in the hope of gaining insight into the nature of the relationship between economic variables and religiosity, and to investigate why inequality or deprivation would increase religiosity. The first study conducted for this thesis used two waves of the Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre combined with economic information to investigate relationships between income, state-level affluence, state-level inequality and religiosity in the USA. Two hierarchical linear models, each containing over 35k US citizens, indicated that state wealth and state inequality were both associated with religiosity. The second study conducted for this thesis had several aims and so, for clarity is referred to in the thesis proper as study 2a and study 2b which are split across chapters 5 and 6. The first aim which is explored in chapter 5 as study 2a, was to test a newly developed scale designed to measure the extent to which individuals believe in the existence of a universal causal force which is both purposeful and intentional, a trait which is referred to in this thesis as transcendent teleological thinking (TTT). It is argued in this thesis that TTT represents the cognitive core of religious and spiritual thinking, and measuring this trait may offer insights into the evolution of religion. The second aim of this study, explored in chapter 6 and referred to in the thesis proper as study 2b, was to take a closer look at the psychological responses to economic inequality and deprivation. The aim of this study was to see how economic variables influence subjective feelings of financial strain, feelings of deprivation and to investigate whether these variables are associated with increases in behavioural religiosity, and TTT. study 2b did not find compelling evidence that economic variables or experience of financial strain and deprivation were strongly associated with levels of behavioural religiosity or TTT. However, study 2b also included a measure of well-being, and closer analysis of the results revealed positive associations between optimism and behavioural religiosity, and a positive association between optimism and TTT. The results of study 2b prompted a change of course, resulting in a shift away from inequality as a predictor of religiosity and towards optimism as a possible outcome of religiosity. The third study, presented in chapter 9, was designed to take a more deliberate look at the relationship between TTT and optimism. This study found a significant positive relationship between TTT and optimism, and this association was not explained by social support or religious attendance. The fourth study presented in chapter 10 of this thesis was a survey experiment designed to look at whether TTT may have a causal relationship with optimism. In this study, participants answered questions on the TTT measure or answered questions taken from the systemising quotient (SQ). After exposure to one of these two measures, participants answered questions to assess their levels of state and trait optimism. The results of this experiment found that participants in the TTT condition had significantly higher levels of state optimism than individuals in the SQ condition, indicating that TTT can increase optimism. This thesis offers several unique contributions to the scientific study of religion. Firstly, it presents evidence that TTT is at the core of religious and spiritual thinking and that measuring this specific trait may offer more insight into religious cognition than the often-used measures included in surveys like the ones conducted by Pew, the European Social Survey and the General Social Survey. This thesis also argues that measuring TTT is a good cross-culturally applicable measure of cognitive religiosity that has the potential to offer increased insight into patterns of religious cognition in a range of cultures and belief systems. Finally, this thesis also presents initial evidence that the adaptive value of religion is in its potential to increase levels of optimism among the religious.

This doctoral thesis aims to better understand why and to what extent people invoke supernatural explanations when unpredictable negative life events (such as misfortunes, illnesses, and natural catastrophes) occur. Supernatural explanations are found in most (if not all) cultures around the world. Often, people do not solely call to supernatural explanations, as they are aware that some natural factors must also play a causal role in bringing about negative events. Research has also shown that supernatural thinking does not result from simply filling in a knowledge gap or from people's previous beliefs. This thesis investigates two psychological mechanisms that may explain how supernatural explanations come readily into mind: (1) a need for predictability, and (2) an intuitive understanding of causal links in terms of morality. Based on previous research, two main cognitive aspects are thought to underpin predictability: (1) certainty, i.e., whether information about natural causal factors is available or lacking, and (2) frequency, i.e., whether an event happens frequently or rarely. It is first hypothesized that supernatural explanations may serve a compensatory psychological function and be invoked when negative life events happen because they help restore our need for predictability when it is threatened, that is, when aspects of an event are uncertain or infrequent. However, supernatural explanations for misfortunes, illnesses, and natural catastrophes, often bear a moral component. Who has never thought whilst hearing about somebody's woe, "he did not deserve this, he is a good person" or conversely, "he had it coming"? The second hypothesis is that information about the moral status of people's previous actions (e.g., the action being morally wrong) triggers supernatural explanations (e.g., supernatural agents bring about negative events as punishment for people's wrongdoings) as a direct consequence of the way our evolved moral cognitive processes work, resulting in intuitive moral causation. Two experimental studies manipulating variables related to predictability and morality in the context of scenario research were implemented as an online questionnaire to test these hypotheses. Study 1 first tested the role of certainty (in the form of availability of information about the natural causes of an event) and the role of moral information (wrongdoing versus rightdoing versus no moral information) in triggering supernatural causal attributions. A secondary aim was to verify two dispositional tendencies related to the need for predictability: individuals' tendencies to be aversive to uncertainty on the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS) and individuals' tendencies to detect illusory patterns in pictures containing random noise (snowy pictures). In the following studies, two measures of supernatural causal thinking were implemented and measured different psychological processes: (1) the qualitative measure, which assessed participants' explicit beliefs about the supernatural causation of an event, and (2) the quantitative measure, which assessed supernatural causal factors which crossed participants' minds while reading the vignette. Results of the first study showed that low certainty and information about wrongdoing significantly increased the frequency of supernatural explanations (i.e., qualitative measure) and of supernatural causal factors crossing participants' minds (i.e., quantitative measure). Also, participants having supernatural causal factors crossing their minds tended to score higher on the illusory pattern detection task and the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale. The second experiment aimed at reproducing and expanding results from Study 1. In this experiment, the scenarios were modified to also test the second aspect of unpredictability (low frequency of events). Another addition was the inclusion of two levels of harm (low versus high) caused by the event, as harmful consequences of the event might be relevant in the motivation to provide an explanation. The results successfully replicated the role of wrongdoing (for both qualitative and quantitative measures) and uncertainty (solely quantitative measure) in triggering more supernatural causal thinking, but showed feeble evidence for the role of frequency. The role of intolerance of uncertainty (IUS) as a dispositional factor was also validated by the experimental results. The second experiment also further investigated what cognitive mechanisms could underpin supernatural moral causation when wrongdoing is perceived. Baumard and Chevallier (2012) proposed that attribution to immanent justice may result from our evolved sense of fairness which would trigger the perception of misfortune as a retribution when they seem proportionate. Accordingly, a follow-up measure probing participants' sense of the deservedness of the event was created to gauge this. The aim was to probe whether participants' supernatural causal thinking was elicited by perceiving the negative event in terms of harm in general (i.e., any kind of harm) or in terms of deserved harm (i.e., harm proportional to wrongdoing). Results of the study showed that supernatural causal thinking (qualitative and quantitative measures) was strongly related to the perception of misfortune as a deserved punishment. These results indicate that supernatural explanations tend to arise when the event received is perceived as fair harm rather than simply unwarranted harm. Finally, participants' sense of deservedness was significantly higher for individuals most intolerant to uncertainty. Together, these results suggest that the prevalence of supernatural explanations for events such as misfortune, illness and natural catastrophe results from intuitive evaluations of such events in terms of fairness, especially when one is averse to uncertainty. Two possible conclusions are discussed: either (1) supernatural causal thinking results from the misfiring of specific cognitive systems dedicated to our sense of fairness (i.e., false positive), or (2) supernatural explanations are a form of motivated reasoning that exploits our moral intuitions in order to reduce uncertainty and regain a sense of predictability on the world (i.e., which could potentially correspond to the cognitive mechanisms underlying Just-World Theory).

This thesis interrogates the conceptualization of deity and divine agency in the Hebrew Bible, focusing particularly on the problem of the relationship of divine images and representatives to their patron deities. In order to move beyond the tendentiousness of previous scholarship that addresses this problem, I employ an interdisciplinary approach that will center cognitive linguistics and the cognitive science of religion, and also include biblical criticism, archaeology, anthropology, materiality studies, and other disciplines. I begin in Part One with a methodological discussion that describes the approaches being taken and interrogates some of the conceptual frameworks that have governed the previous scholarship on the question, such as “religion” and the practice of definition. It will then move on to discuss the concepts of agency and personhood, and how contemporary anthropological research on both can help inform our interrogation of the ancient world. Part Two begins the interrogation of the generic concept of deity, demonstrating that such concepts are products of the engagement of our intuitive and reflective reasoning with our cognitive ecologies, and that they build on our everyday conceptualizations of agency and personhood. These dynamics facilitate a view of divine agency as separable and communicable, which will be demonstrated to undergird the unique relationships understood to be shared by deities and their divine images. Chapter 4 employs a cognitive linguistic lens to propose semantic bases, domains, and profiles for the generic concept of deity in the Hebrew Bible. Part Three applies the models developed in Chapters 3 and 4 to an interrogation of YHWH as a deity and of YHWH’s divine agents, such as the ark of the covenant, the messenger of YHWH, and the very text of the Torah itself. The Conclusion summarizes findings and discusses implications for further research.

Research has revealed that our moral dispositions and preferences are dynamic, not static. Our previous decisions, as well as the decisions of others like us, influence our subsequent moral activities. For example, the performance or recollection of past transgressions often compels us to compensate by engaging in good deeds, i.e., moral "cleansing". On the other hand, after performing or recalling our own good deeds - or those of in-group members - we may feel "licensed" to act immorally. These two separate but complimentary mechanisms (i.e., moral licensing and cleansing) form a model of moral behaviour termed moral compensation. The Moral compensation model allows us to entertain a "debits and credits" conceptualisation of moral behaviour but it cannot adequately account for the flexibility of our day-to-day moral behaviour. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate instances of moral transference, i.e., episodes where past (im)moral behaviour is displaced into the present, where past in-group behaviour is displaced onto us, and where moral imperatives are displaced onto other (e.g., supernatural) agents. The methods used in this research are varied and include self-report, memory recall, implicit association testing and perceptual judgement. Using a novel confession paradigm, Chapter 3 explores whether the performance of a false confession can alleviate guilt for an unrelated past transgression. Chapter 4 investigates whether the recollection of a past unethical behaviour can trigger increased sensitivity to cues of social surveillance. Chapter 5 probes the effect of surveillance cues on confessional behaviour and seeks to discover whether such cues trigger voluntary confession as a means of mitigating possible punishment. Chapter 6 considers the role of forgiving God concepts on people's endorsement of state-sanctioned punishment, in particular whether such concepts restrict the tendency for individuals to "outsource" the responsibility of punishment to God. Chapter 7 explores whether information about ingroup (im)morality triggers vicarious moral compensation effects. This thesis concludes that - contra the moral compensation model - our everyday moral behaviours are influenced by more than a process of moral self-regulation. I further conclude that religious affiliation and beliefs are important factors influencing the mechanism of moral transference.

Reformed Epistemology is an influential view in contemporary philosophy of religion, according to which theistic beliefs that are the product of our native, non-inferential cognitive faculties often constitute knowledge if God exists. My aim in this thesis is to ascertain whether Reformed Epistemology is viable in light of contemporary scientific explanations of the mechanisms of religious belief- formation, especially the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). I argue for a qualified “yes.” To begin with, I attempt to carefully reconstruct and scrutinise some currently popular “debunking arguments” from CSR’s findings, which aim to show that non-inferential religious beliefs are not knowledge, even if true, given the causal origins that CSR ascribes to them. I try to show that in various ways these arguments fail. Subsequently, I attempt to find a better such argument. The strongest debunking argument, I contend, is one that focuses upon the diverse and mutually inconsistent outputs of the religious belief-producing mechanisms described by CSR. However, I go on to argue that even supposing that this argument succeeds in showing that religious beliefs that are partly the product of contingent cultural influences are not knowledge even if true, there remains a body of what I term “core propositions”—propositions concerning the existence of some kind of personal, supernatural creator and moral lawgiver, in which humans are naturally disposed to believe regardless of their particular cultural setting— that can be known if God exists. Finally, I try to show that merely having this core supernaturalistic knowledge would provide someone with the cognitive contact with God that is sufficient for having a personal relationship with God (if God exists), even if only de re relationship. I argue, moreover, that God would have positively good reasons for creating a world in which human beliefs about life’s most important matters, including religious matters, are significantly dependent upon testimony and hence subject to the ebbs and flows of cultural tides.

Psychological research suggests that children acquire cultural concepts through early developing cognitive mechanisms combined with specific cultural learning. An understudied area of cultural acquisition is children’s understanding of non-human minds, such as God. This thesis gives evidence that young children need not anthropomorphize non-human minds in order to understand them. Instead, children have a general “theory of mind” that is tailored through experience to accommodate the various important minds in their cultural environment. The intuitive default is toward super-attributes, making children naturally inclined or “prepared” to acquire god concepts. Four empirical studies were conducted with 75 British and 66 Israeli preschool-aged children. In Study 1, children participated in an ignorance-based theory-of-mind task and were asked to consider the mental states of human and supernatural agents. Children at all ages attributed correct knowledge to the supernatural agents and ignorance to the human agents. In Study 2, children participated in two perception-based theory-of-mind tasks and were asked to consider the perspective of two super-perceiving animals, God, and two human agents. Three-year-olds attributed knowledge to the animals and God and, by age four, children could distinguish among agents correctly. Also, by age four, children recognized that aging limits the perception of human agents but not God’s. In Study 3, children participated in a memory-based theory-of-mind task in which they were asked to consider the memory of God and differently aged agents Children at all ages responded that God would remember something that the children themselves had forgotten. By age five, children responded that a baby and granddad would have forgotten. These results propose that preschool-aged children regard individual constraints when considering mental states. Study 4 focused on children’s notions of immortality. Cultural differences were found. British children attributed immortality to God before correctly attributing mortality to human agents, and Israeli children attributed immortality to God and mortality to humans more consistently than did British children. Collectively, these studies indicate that children do not have to resort to anthropomorphism to reason about non-human agents but instead have the cognitive capacity to represent other types of minds because of early cognitive capacities. It appears that concepts vary in their degree of fit with early-developing human conceptual systems, and hence, vary in their likelihood of successful cultural transmission.

A large body of research has investigated the role of religious belief within terror management theory and the cognitive science of religion, with interesting results emerging for atheists as compared to religious individuals. While atheists explicitly disavow religion, implicit measurement techniques have revealed an intuitive belief in religious concepts, particularly following reminders of death (Jong et al., 2012). However, to date, no studies have directly observed the cognitive processes that underlie these effects. In response to this gap in the literature, the present study seeks to propose and test a model of the cognitive pathways utilized by religious and atheistic individuals as they manage existential concerns. Specifically, this model proposes that following mortality salience (MS), both religious and atheistic individuals experience intuitive religious belief due to evolutionary cognitive biases. These intuitions are then consciously shaped in accordance with explicitly endorsed ideologies, leading religious individuals to accept intuitive religious belief and atheistic individuals to override their intuitions with a more analytic orientation. As such, the present study hypothesized that MS (compared to pain) would lead to decreased need for cognition (NFC) in Christians but increased NFC in atheists. In a sample of 248 adults, an ANOVA indicated that Christians primed with MS reported lower NFC than those primed with pain, while the opposite effect emerged for atheists, providing compelling evidence for the proposed model. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Evidential evil is an encompassing title for moral evil, natural disasters, disease, famine, divorce, suffering, or other calamities in life that yield dissatisfaction or discernable discomfort. This area of evidential evil is the focus of this paper generally, including the argument posed by William Rowe from evidential evil and contemporary treatments offered by Bruce Russell. The argumentation is God’s nonexistence from the platform, or derivative of no greater good observed or known, of the justification or allowance of evil. It is not a refutation of the premises, per se, but instead, the biases associated with them are de facto statements of seeming certainty absent the claim of certain knowledge. In like manner, the contemporary work of Bruce Russell, specifically the 2018 essay “The Problem of Evil and Replies to Some Important Responses,” will be critiqued in chapter three. This critique will point to a specific bias and evaluate this bias for objective discourse. This, then, is the heart of this thesis, the specificity of the ontology of bias as a worldview engine as it pertains to the Problem of Evil and addressing this bias to determine the incoherence to reality to instantiate warranted belief in God’s existence.

This thesis intends to revise and update devoted actor theory (DAT) by introducing a neglected dataset—female suicide bombers. DAT provides one such theoretical framework for understanding extremist group behavior and, to a lesser extent, suicidal bombing. DAT is largely satisfying: its claims and conclusions address relevant issues and provide compelling answers to critical questions. However, it is not without its analytical and empirical gaps. Crucially, DAT does not explicitly account for the narratives and characteristic motives of female suicide bombers—which often differ in logic, content, and tone from those of their male counterparts. In addition, DAT assumes that people who are fused with extreme groups are willing to self-sacrifice for their group, but the theory does not account for how this fusion process transpires. Therefore, I propose two amendments to DAT that not only address theoretical issues, which arise partially from the lack of female terrorist accounts, but also creates a narrative that bridges the gap that would explain how an individual progresses from bonding to a group to making the decision to die for it. Accordingly, I also propose to theorize a psychosocial process that links the way in which individuals, specifically females, become fused to a group and edge closer to the most extreme of extremist decisions: to annihilate their bodies and selves, while at the same time annihilating or wreaking havoc upon the lives of others whom they have deemed enemies of themselves or their group.

Religious belief is a byproduct of evolutionarily designed cognitive mechanisms. The ubiquity of religious belief and experience across human cultures is explained by our common human psychology; our domain-specific cognitive mechanisms give rise, collectively, to the phenomenon of byproduct religious belief/experience. In this thesis, I will examine what I call religion-generating cognitive mechanisms, and I will argue that byproduct raw god-beliefs are developed by cultures into refined god-beliefs. These refined god-beliefs are co-opted by evolutionary processes and are cultural adaptations. My conception of “religious belief” in terms of raw and refined god-beliefs allows a disambiguation of the term “religion,” and it contributes to the ongoing debate between byproduct theorists and adaptationists by clarifying that raw god-beliefs are biological byproducts while refined god-beliefs are cultural adaptations.