The Nature of Agnosticism Part 4.1
What Causes Religious Belief? A Multilevel Naturalistic Account Central question: If religiosity varies across people, places, and historical periods, what biological, cognitive, psychological, social, and cultural conditions help explain who believes, what they believe, and how strongly they believe it? As I’ve begun converging on the idea that religious belief is independent of evidential reasoning, I began to ask “What factors contribute to, mediate, moderate, and impact the presence and level of religiosity?” Observing the statistical variability in religiosity seems to imply that there are predictors correlated with what you believe and the strength of conviction. I now ask myself: “What are they?” In addition, are there game theoretic explanations for the presence of belief? Are there sociological and economic aspects to belief? Is it biopsychosocial? How about evolutionary aspects and neurophysiology? This is obviously an incredibly complex phenomenon, so...