Microfounding Religion

Microfounding religion entails casting members of religion as strategic players who each optimize her own behavior given other players’ behavior. An alternative, non-economic, approach is to assume that the members are nonstrategic, but are instead motivated to follow divine precepts. I prove an equivalence result - under certain conditions, the behavior of a strategic member is exactly the same as the behavior of a precept follower. Because these conditions are unobservable, it is impossible to ascertain the true motivation of every member. This implies an inherent indeterminacy in choosing the ‘correct’ model of religious behavior. To microfound religion, therefore, is simply to make a hypothetical description of the logic underlying observed behavior, which non-believers may assume to be purely human, but believers can take as divine.