Macquarie University’s Dr Robert Ross was part of an international team of researchers, led by the Brunel University of London, which surveyed more than 3,500 respondents from Canada, China, Czechia, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.

“Religion has been declining in many countries, including Australia, though it has been argued that the influence of religion can linger, even in secular societies,” says Dr Ross.

“Our research tested a ‘belief in belief’ hypothesis, coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett, which proposes that people, even atheists, can accept religious belief is a good thing even if they don’t believe themselves.”

The study adapted a widely used experimental philosophy task that had been used to identify the ‘Knobe Effect,’ a tendency of people to intuitively interpret behaviours that produce morally bad outcomes as more intentional. The study was the first to examine the Knobe Effect in the context of people’s intuitive attitudes towards atheism.

Participants were randomly presented with one of two versions of a scenario – either atheism or religious focused – to assess whether they believed the editor of a newspaper article intended to create atheists or believers.

“Participants who were shown the ‘atheism scenario’ were more likely to intuitively interpret the decisions made by the editor of the newspaper as intentional where the side effect was making some people believe God doesn’t exist compared to the ‘religious believer scenario’ where the side effect of the editor’s decision was making some people believe God exists,” says Dr Ross.

“When we interpret these results in the context of existing research on the Knobe effect, it suggests participants, even atheists, intuitively think religious belief is a good thing . This is because participants rated the religious changes as more intentional when the newspaper article led to increased atheism compared to increased belief in God.”

The study discussed that, although the world is rapidly secularising (according to measures of religious attendance, prayer frequency and self-reported belief in gods), religions have enjoyed prominence throughout history and powerfully shaped norms and institutions.

“There seems to be a sort of cultural lag, whereby some beliefs and intuitions shift more quickly than others over time, and religion has experienced a lingering intuitive cultural influence,” says Dr Ross.

“Although atheists in secular countries have abandoned belief, they appear to have retained a degree of intuitive belief in belief.”

The paper ‘Belief in Belief: Even Atheists in Secular Countries Show Intuitive Preferences Favouring Religious Belief’ was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal on 27 March 2025.