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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Toxic Theisms? New Strategies for Prebunking Religious Belief-Behaviour Complexes

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This article offers a brief epidemiological analysis and description of some  of the main cognitive (and coalitional) biases that can facilitate the emergence and  enable the maintenance of a broad category of toxic traditions, which will be referred  to here as “religious” belief-behaviour complexes (BBCs) or “theisms”. I argue that such  BBCs played an “adaptive” role in the Upper Paleolithic and have continued to “work”  throughout most of human history by enhancing the species’ capacity for material  production and promoting its biological reproduction. However, today the theist credulity  and conformity biases that surreptitiously shape these kinds of social assemblages  have now become maladaptive in most contexts in the Anthropocene. In order  to help address the pressing global challenges our species faces, such as extreme climate  change, excessive consumer capitalism, and escalating cultural conflict, I commend the  use of “prebunking” and other debiasing strategies in our attempts to reduce the toxicity  of theisms in the body politic.