some Siberian shamans in their trances. One group's unimportant reli-
gious concepts can become another's religion, and vice versa.
Serious religion makes use of the same notions found in the nonse-
rious repertoire, plus some additional features. To understand how this
occurs we need to dig deeper into the way a mind works when it rep-
resents concepts. It is all very well for me to suggest that the mind can
build complex supernatural constructs out of very simple conceptual
bricks—ontological categories, violation tags, inferences—but how do
I know all this? Why did I say that ANIMALorTOOL is an ontological
category and is used as a template, but WALRUS orTELEPHONE is not?
Why this particular list of ontological categories? Why am I so sure [91]
that "same species, same organs" is an intuitive rule in human minds?
So far I have done what no respectable scientist should do: I have
given my conclusions before reviewing the evidence. When we turn to
the evidence, we will not only see why some principles and concepts
are intuitive to human minds but also why some conceptual constructs
become so important.
WHATSUPERNATURALCONCEPTSARELIKE