Religious concepts persist through minimal counterintuitiveness that is memorable without rupturing meaning

Evidence

These kinds of memory biases play an important role in religious belief. The extraordinary agents endemic to religions appear to possess a particularly evocative set of abilities not shared by ordinary beings. They can be invisible; they can see things from afar; they can move through physical objects. This minimal counterintuitiveness is memorable, giving these concepts an advantage in cultural transmission. These departures from common sense are systematic but not radical enough to rupture meaning completely. As Sperber has put it, these minimal counterintuitions are relevant mysteries: they are closely connected to background knowledge, but do not admit to a final interpretation. Because they arouse attention and are open-textured, people can think about these concepts and what they mean in different, endless ways. These features make them ideal candidates for cultural survival. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 364

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Defines Sperber’s ‘relevant mysteries’: counterintuitive concepts that arouse attention yet resist final interpretation — a mechanism directly relevant to the analytical framing of the divine gaze.
• XREF: This cognitive account of minimal counterintuitiveness supports the reader’s Big God / omniscient-gaze analysis: the invisible omniscient watcher is precisely such an attention-arousing, open-textured concept.

Related

• Supernatural agents’ minimal counterintuitiveness explains their cultural advantage (similarity 0.83)
• Memorability alone cannot explain which supernatural agents get worshipped (similarity 0.83)
• Memorability of god concepts alone cannot explain which gods get worshipped (similarity 0.82)
• Belief in supernatural watchers depends on both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission (similarity 0.81)
• Mildly counterintuitive content boosts cultural transmission of ideas (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (similarity 0.81)
• Supernatural watcher gods extend an intuitive human social-monitoring faculty. (similarity 0.80)
• The most culturally successful supernatural beliefs mildly violate intuitive expectations. (similarity 0.80)
• Surviving supernatural beliefs mildly violate intuitive expectations rather than wildly or never doing so (similarity 0.80)
• Omniscient-god beliefs only change behavior when the deity is actively on the believer’s mind. (similarity 0.79)