FINAL PROGRESS BOX:
THE FULL HISTORY
OF ALL RELIGION (EVER)For eons, people naturally have talked about millions
of exceedingly parochial and contextual matters but
also about some objects and things that are not
[326] directly observable. It is after all a hallmark of the
"modern mind"—the mind that we have had for mil-
lennia—that we entertain plans, conjectures, specu-
late on the possible as well as the actual. Among the
millions of messages exchanged, some are attention-
grabbing because they violate intuitions about
objects and beings in our environment. These coun-
terintuitive descriptions have a certain staying power,
as memory experiments suggest. They certainly pro-
vide the stuff that good stories are made of. They
may mention islands that float adrift or mountains
that digest food or animals that talk. These are gen-
erally taken as fiction though the boundary between
a fictional story and an account of personal experi-
ence is often difficult to trace. Some of these themes
are particularly salient because they are about agents.
This opens up a rich domain of possible inferences.
When you talk about agents, you wonder to what
extent they are similar to unseen and dangerous
predators. You can also try to imagine what they per-
ceive, what they know, what they plan and so on,
because there are inference systems in your mind
that constantly produce such speculations about
other people. Among these accounts, some suggest
that counterintuitive agents have information about
relevant aspects of interaction between the people
exchanging these messages. This gives speakers and
listeners a strong motivation to hear, tell or perhaps
RELIGION EXPLAINED