gods and the mental instincts that create them 247In other words, although you can say that theadaloin general see what
humans cannot see, what first comes to mind is that they can detect behaviors
that would have consequences for social interaction: someone who has polluted
a particular place puts others in danger and should perform appropriate pu-
rification rites. Whether someone did violate these rules or not is clearly stra-
tegic information. When people represent possible violations, this activates
their inference systems for social interaction. For them, it also goes without
saying that it isthatparticular kind of information that theadalohave access
to. It may be hidden to people (this is the “imperfect access principle”: people’s
access to strategic information is not guaranteed), but not to supernatural
agents (they have full access). People are told that “Someone urinates in a
house; we humans cannot see it; but that makes theadalovery angry,” or some
other statement of that kind. Interpreting such statements requires that the
adalo(or whatever supernatural agent people in your group talk about) have
access to strategic information.
The same remark would apply to agents (like the Christian god) described
by theologians and other religious specialists as omniscient. Most believers
would readily assent to statements such as “God knows everything” or “God
sees everything.” This, however, does not mean that the religious agent is
literally assumed to represent every aspect of every situation in the world. In
people’s conversations and trains of thought concerning God, it would seem
that such statements as “I bought broccoliand God knows about it” are some-
how less frequent and salient than thoughts like “He lied to herand God knows
it” or “I did my bestand God knows it.” In other words, if something counts
as strategic information, in the precise sense used here, it is more easily and
naturally included in thoughts about God’s thoughts.
In detailed experimental work, Justin Barrett has shown that people’s ex-
plicit notions of an omniscient God are combined with an intuitive understand-
ing of God as having a humanlike mind.^26 A person may (explicitly) declare
that the gods see and hear everything yet show them an offering or say a prayer
out loud. The assumption of full access to strategic information is just another
aspect of this discrepancy between official, and explicitly entertained, descrip-
tions of supernatural agents, and the intuitive assumptions activated when
thinking about them. Now why is the full-access expectation so important to
interaction? I would claim that it changes the way one considers a situation,
and this has effects in several domains. One of them is the construal ofmoral
understandings, and the other one is the possible link between religious agents
andmisfortune.