tem (you intuitively assume that people do not deliver the goods, as it
were, unless theyget the payment) and a person-file system (you
assume that the ancestors are not a corporation, they are distinct per-
sons with particular utilities).
I chose to illustrate this with the Kwaio example because inferences
aboutadaloshould now be familiar, after several chapters in which
these ancestors were described at length. But the same description
mutatis mutandis would hold for religious concepts in most human
groups. Most Christians for instance live in social contexts saturated
with explicit religious doctrine. They constantly hear clear, coherent
and systematic presentations of the doctrine by professional special- [313]
ists. It would seem that their religious representations must be some
distillation of this information. But, as Justin Barrett's discussion of
the theological correctness effect shows, the situation is in fact more
complex. People's intuitive understanding of God, often at odds with
the official version, drives their inferences about particular occur-
rences. These inferences are what make the real difference between
believers and nonbelievers. The former have thoughts about God's
possible reactions to this or that action, have the intuition that a par-
ticular behavior is shameful in the eyes of God, trust that God will
protect them in this or that dangerous circumstance, wonder why God
is testing them with misery, and so on.
These thoughts, here as in the Kwaio case, are nontheological—
by which I mean that they are not concerned with the general ques-
tion of God's existence or powers but more understandably with
practical questions: what to expect now and what to do next. And in
the same way as among the Kwaio and indeed all people with reli-
gious notions, these practical thoughts require activation of diverse
mental systems. When people pray this activates the mental system
that handles intuitions about verbal communication. When they
promise God that they will behave in the future, their social
exchange system gives the intuition that you do not get a benefit
(protection) without paying a particular cost (submission, in this
case). When they assume that God perceived what people did, this is
because their intuitive psychology is activated. When they see
immoral behavior as an offense to God, this requires intuitions from
their moral emotional system.
To sum up, then, a whole variety of systems seem to make use of
the assumption that there are ancestors around, or that there is a God.
WHYBELIEF?