A new study led by Dr Will Gervais, Reader in Psychology at Brunel University London, suggests that even committed atheists in some of the world’s most secular societies may intuitively favour religion over atheism.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge assumptions about the relationship between rationality and disbelief, as well as the notion that the modern world is steadily progressing into an “atheist age”.
The research tested the idea of what philosopher Daniel Dennett has called “belief in belief” - the impression that religious belief is a good thing for society, even if one does not hold such beliefs personally.
Dr Gervais and his colleagues examined this concept among around 3,800 participants from eight countries with low levels of religiosity: Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.
Participants were asked to evaluate scenarios based on a phenomenon known as the “Knobe effect”, which has been used by experimental philosophers to assess moral judgement and perceived intentionality.
In one classic version of this task, a company CEO implements a policy that boosts profits while harming the environment. Even when the CEO declares indifference to environmental outcomes, most people still interpret the harm as intentional. However, if the same policy results in environmental benefit, people are far less likely to see the outcome as intentional. This asymmetry reveals an intuitive bias: people are more inclined to see harmful outcomes as deliberate.
In the study, participants read a scenario where a journalist publishes a story that sells well, leading either to more atheism or more religious faith in society. Participants were then asked whether the journalist intentionally caused this religious shift. The results showed that participants were about 40% more likely to say the journalist intentionally created more atheists than to say the journalist intentionally created more believers.
This bias held true across most countries surveyed and was evident even among atheists. According to Dr Gervais, “Our participants intuitively viewed creating more atheists as similarly intentionally caused – a spiritual rather than environmental pollution, perhaps.”
The study points to a persistent intuition that religious belief is a moral or social good, and that diminishing it requires deliberate interference.
Dr Gervais situates these findings within a broader historical and cultural framework.
“Over cultural evolutionary time, the association between religious belief and moral goodness has become deeply culturally ingrained,” he explains. While formal religious practice and belief have declined in several countries, these moral associations may continue to shape individual intuitions.
His recent book, Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species, explores how a species as deeply religious as Homo sapiens could produce growing numbers of atheists. The book argues that religion has played a crucial role in human cooperation and societal development, fostering moral norms and collective identity.
This long-standing influence, the study suggests, leaves cultural traces even as institutional religion wanes.
“Because religions have exerted tremendous influence on our societies for millennia, it would be genuinely surprising if some latent religious trace didn’t culturally linger as overt expressions of faith decline,” writes Dr Gervais. “Our newest results are consistent with this possibility.”
The researchers argue that these findings complicate the idea that humanity is entering a new, secular era.
“Belief may be wavering in many countries,” writes Dr Gervais, “but belief in belief persists, complicating any conclusion that we’ve truly entered an ‘atheist age’.”
The study indicates that intuitive support for religion may be more deeply rooted in human psychology and culture than previously assumed, even among those who consciously reject religious faith.
While it does not claim that atheists secretly believe in God, it does suggest that religious belief continues to be seen - on some level - as beneficial, and that this perception is difficult to fully disentangle from modern secular identities.
