The fact that people tend to adopt their parents' concepts (mean-
ing, more broadly, the concepts used by many people around them) is
also a consequence of this activation of many systems in many differ-
ent circumstances. Most Christians spend little time pondering the
mystery of the Trinity, the resurrection of the flesh and other such
theological wonders. Most religious thoughts are about particular sit-
uations, particular people, particular feelings. This means that such
concepts are indeed activated in a variety of different circumstances
for different inferential purposes. But this also implies that it would
require extra effort to acquire religious concepts in a way that is fun-
[318] damentally different from what is familiar to one's social milieu. To
produce moral inferences using a particular god-concept, as well as
contagion-based inferences, as well as intuitive psychology inferences,
etc., one must be in a variety of contexts where the concept can be
used. This requires a milieu of people who use that concept too. It is
not just that people want to have the same concepts as their group. It
is that some concepts are so tightly connected to social interaction
that it would be bizarre and in fact unlikely for only one person in a
group to have those concepts.
This leads us back to a central question: Why do some people
believe and not others? I have described religion in terms of cognitive
processes that are common to all human brains, part and parcel of how
a normal mind functions. Does this mean that nonbelievers are abnor-
mal? Or to put a more positive slant on this question, that they man-
aged to free themselves from the shackles of ordinary cognition?
We would very much like to have a precise and meaningful answer
to the question, Why does so-and-so have religious beliefs that leave
others perfectly indifferent? We would like that because we (human
beings, not just psychologists or anthropologists) are fascinated by
personal differences. More, we are designedto pay attention to individ-
ual differences, as interaction with other people is our prime resource
and interaction depends to some extent on what others are like. (This
is why first-year psychology students are often vastly more interested
in theories and findings in personality studies, about what makes the
difference between you and me, than in the rest of scientific psychol-
ogy—for example, about what makes humans different from refrigera-
tors, oysters, cockroaches, giraffes and chimps.) This powerful urge to
understand what makes individuals unique is the source of much
reflection, speculation and informal hypothesis-testing in people's
conversations the world over.
RELIGION EXPLAINED