doctrines and salient events: that gods and spirits are seen as endowed
with great power, including that of bringing about or averting disas-
ters. People struck by misfortune strive for an explanation and for
some reassurance, and this is what religious concepts would seem to
provide. A simple story again: accidents happen, people want to know
why, if they have gods and spirits they can say why.
But both stories are probably false. The facts themselves are not
disputed. People do connect notions of gods to what they may or may
not do, they indeed connect misfortune to the existence of supernat-
ural agents. It is the way these connections are established in the mind
[170] that anthropology would see in a very different perspective. Religion
does not really support morality, it is people's moral intuitions that
make religion plausible; religion does not explain misfortune, it is the
way people explain misfortune that makes religion easier to acquire.
To get to that point we need to explore in much more detail the way
social inference systems in the mind handle notions of morality and
situations of misfortune. That we have evolved capacities for social
interaction means that we tend to represent morality and misfortune
in a very special way, which makes the connection with supernatural
agents extremely easy and apparently obvious.
LEGISLATORS, EXEMPLARS, ONLOOKERS
Shiva created all living things, including people, and gave them each a
"headwriting," an invisible inscription on the forehead that specifies
the person's character, tendencies and overall behavior. The particular
mix of humors in a person's body are a consequence of this headwrit-
ing and explain why different people act differently in similar circum-
stances. This, at least, is how Tamil people in Kalappur (India)
account for personality differences and explain people's behavior, at
least in some circumstances. As anthropologist Sheryl Daniel reports,
concepts of morality in fact constitute a "toolbox" from which people
extract whatever element is relevant to a particular situation. The
notion of a destiny fixed by the gods is not the only one. Against this
stands the idea that people can find in themselves the will to perform
goodkarma deeds, actions that change the balance of their moral
account, as it were. Such actions may even affect the balance of
humors inside the person (which in Western terms would equate with
a change in personality).RELIGION EXPLAINED