Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts: A Unified Theory In the Cognitive Science of Religion (original) (raw)

Traditional cognitive scientists of religion (CSR) have argued that memorability for minimally counterintuitive concepts is a distinct phenomenon unconnected with distinctiveness effect and the von restorff effect. I argue that this assumption flies in the face of cognitive science bias towards unified theories of cognition which dictates that we should assume that two similar seeming behaviors arise from the same cognitive processes unless we have strong evidence to believe otherwise. Furthermore, the traditional CSR approach is unable to explain the success of some of the most widespread religious beliefs such as the belief in God or spread of religious concepts (such as NRM beliefs) in the modern world. The context-based model not only redeems the historical and sociocultural study of religion as an essential complement for a cognitive science of religion, but it also provides a systematic way of integrating the two in developing a truly scientific approach to the study of religion.