spond to their actual commitments, people here are certain that they
believe in a God with nonstandard cognitive powers. However, the
recall test produces what could be called a certain "cognitive pressure"
that diverts their attention from the desire to express "correct" beliefs.
In such a context, people use intuitive expectations about how a mind
works, which are available automatically since they are constantly acti-
vated to make sense of people's behavior at all times. When the task
allows for conscious monitoring, we get the theological version; when
the task requires fast access, we get the anthropomorphic version.
This not only shows that the theological concept has not displaced the
spontaneous one but also that it is not stored in the same way. Very [89]
likely the theological concept is stored in the form of explicit, sen-
tence-like propositions ("God is omniscient; God is everywhere"). In
contrast, the spontaneous concept is stored in the format of direct
instructions to intuitive psychology, which would explain why it is
accessed much faster.
"TC" is great coinage though perhaps misleading, as the effect is
much more general than the term "theological" would suggest. That
is, Barrett and Keil tested subjects in literary cultures, where there are
theological sources that describe supernatural agents, and specialists
who know these sources. But in many human groups, there are neither
theologians nor specialized interpreters of texts, nor indeed any texts
describing supernatural agents. Yet the "TC" effect exists there too.
That is, people have an explicit version of what they hold to be the
important features of the supernatural concepts: spirits are invisible,
ghosts are dead people who wander around, gods are eternal, this
woman gave birth without having sex, etc. What makes such concepts
easy to acquire, store and communicate is not just that explicit part but
the tacit one that is completely transparent to them: for instance, that
spirits are like persons in having a mind that works like other minds.
So you do not need to have theologians around in order to think in
"theologically correct" ways.
SILLY TALES OR SERIOUS RELIGION?
The supernatural comes in two varieties: more serious and less serious.
Serious scholars often ignore the nonserious stuff, and they are wrong
to do so. So far, we have an explanation of supernatural templates that
WHATSUPERNATURALCONCEPTSARELIKE