effect of particular literate theologies, a point I will discuss in another
chapter. But it is just that: one ideology among the many types that get
high cognitive salience by recruiting emotions and representations we
naturally have in the presence of dead people.
The properties of corpses provide material that makes some super-
natural concepts relevantfor reasons that are quite different from our
need for comfort. So religion may well be much less about death than
about dead bodies. The dead are by no means the only available
source of intuitions about powerful agents with strategic information
and counterintuitive physical presence. But they are a rich source of
[228] such intuitions, given the organization of our minds and the tragically
lavish supply of these real and counterintuitive objects.
RELIGION EXPLAINED