 In recent years, a number of authors have made an impressive case for the hypothesis that belief in a “Big God”—a supernatural being who is omniscient, morally concerned, and acts as a policing agent in human affairs—played a crucial role in the transition from face-to-face “band level” human groups made up of at most a few hundred individuals to much larger tribal groups, and ultimately to chiefdoms and nation states (Norenzayan et al. 2016). These are provocative and controversial ideas. Much less controversial is the claim that many people believe that even when no other human can observe them, a supernatural being of some sort is aware of what they are doing and thinking, and that this being may punish thoughts and behavior it disapproves of and reward thoughts and behavior it approves of, with the punishments and rewards delivered either during the agent’s lifetime or after she  dies.[22]  In the experiments, described in  section 5.1,  designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the social punishment hypothesis, Batson and his colleagues went to great lengths to insure that participants in the “low potential for negative social evaluation” condition would think that no one knew of their decisions, and thus that no one would think badly of them or sanction them if they decided not to help. But, of course, none of the steps taken to insure secrecy would be effective in keeping an omniscient God from knowing what these participants had decided. So if we assume that many people believe an omniscient God wants them to help others in need, and that they believe Divine sanctions for not helping are more likely when the target engenders  empathy,[23]  the experiments do nothing to rule out a variation of the social punishment hypothesis which maintains that participants are motivated by a desire to avoid punishments administered by God.