Available online 23 November 2022, 6481

Evolutionary theories of religion frequently assume that the presence of moralizing gods is positively associated with social complexity. An influential source of evidence for this assumption comes from researchers using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample’s moralizing high gods variable as a proxy measure of their outcome of interest (the presence of moralizing gods). In this paper, we critically assess the common assumption that moralizing gods are associated with complex societies. We first discuss the high god variable’s coding criteria, which is defined by whether or not a god is the creator or director of the universe, regardless of power or omniscience. We then show that these criteria, which are not relevant to the question about whether gods are moralistic or punitive, has led researchers to underestimate the presence of moralizing gods by systematically producing false negatives – inferring that truly present moralizing gods are absent because moralizing high gods are absent. We then use datasets that include both moralizing gods and moralizing high gods to show that researchers risk inferring false negatives more frequently among lower levels of social complexity. As we also show, this likely leads to a spurious positive association between social complexity and the presence of moralizing gods. We then briefly discuss the ethnographic data and historical biases that might have strengthened this spurious association. We therefore question the widely assumed positive association between morally punitive gods and social complexity, and conclude that ethnographic evidence supports the prevalence of moralizing gods among small-scale societies.

Moralizing gods

Evolution of religion

Social complexity

High gods

Standard Cross-Cultural Sample

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.