Cognitive Anthroplogy does not claim to study each and every phenomenon described by the word 'religion'. It is concerned with things often found in great religious institutions, but not only there, and that certainly happen in a more or less overt way, in every single human brain. These things are counter-intuitive beliefs and actions accomplished by deference.

Counter-intuitive beliefs are beliefs that look utterly absurd to everyone but those who share them. For example, it is counter-intuitive that spirits thirsty for perfume invade the body of mortals, that a piece of bread transforms each week into the flesh of a dead god, or that human twins are birds. Counter-intuitive beliefs are not necessarily false. Several theories try to account for their spread and success: according to one of these, counter-intuitive beliefs are not really held by those who profess them; rather, they are accepted through trust in supposedly more knowledgeable people. Counter-intuitive beliefs, one might say, are held between mental inverted commas. Another theory has it that the success of such beliefs is due to their special affinities with evolved mental devices, naive theories.

Acts accomplished by deference are actions whose outcome is nowhere to be perceived, or comes in such a way that any other action could have brought them. There again, scholars wonder if people's intuitions concerning what is agency, what is a cause, etc. suffice to explain for such malfunctions of human action.

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