Religious propositional attitudes and underdetermination of public representation: Commentary on Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods

The commentary addresses a specific aspect of Norenzayan's work: the use of the notion of credible display as developed by J. Henrich (“The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and their Implications for Cultural Evolution,” Evolution and Human Behavior 30 4] 2009: 244–260) to make sense of typical (extravagant) religious behaviors. Norenzayan ascribes an essential role to those displays in the diffusion of religious beliefs. The authors maintain that to use the concept of CRED is not appropriate given the typical natures of religious beliefs and behaviors. Contrary to Norenzayan's essential claim in Big Gods, they defend the hypothesis that audiences have no indubitable way of inferring from religious actions the religious beliefs of performing agents. It is essentially explained by the fact that there does not exist any necessary link between proclaimed religious beliefs and observable religious behaviors. Religious behaviors are public representations, generally more or less rigidly stipulated, hence they typically have more to do with social coordination than with genuine expression of performers' religious propositional attitudes, that is, they do not require genuine religious beliefs. Furthermore, as there is no guarantee or necessity that the religious behavior be systematically associated to true beliefs, such behaviors are eminently recruitable for individual aims and ends (social gains, status enhancement), which might partly explain why they get maintained in various cultural traditions.