In his influential work on the cognitive science of religion (CSR), Pascal Boyer argues that the spread of religious ideas involves a tradeoff between their “intuitiveness” and their interest-provokingness/memorability (i.e.,their capacity to provoke interest and be remembered). For Boyer, religious ideas are “intuitive” insofar as they are easy to understand and learn. However, other CSR studies suggest that religious ideas are “intuitive” insofar as they are easy to believe. In analyzing the spread of religious ideas, no study has considered the tradeoff between interest-provokingness/memorability and intuitiveness in the sense of being easy to believe. The present article takes up this task by considering several religious concepts that are intuitively easy to believe (e.g., immortal souls, spirit beings, a Creator God, a just world). It is argued that, in typical religions, such concepts are incorporated into myths. Through incorporation, these concepts lose some of their intuitive believability but gain interest-provokingness/memorability.

帕斯卡·博耶 (Pascal Boyer)在其关于宗教认知科学 ( CSR ) 的有影响力的著作中认为，宗教思想的传播涉及其“直觉性”和引起兴趣/可记忆性（即激发兴趣和被记住的能力）之间的权衡。 . 对于博耶来说，宗教思想是“直观的”，因为它们易于理解和学习。但是，其他CSR研究表明，宗教观念在易于相信的范围内是“直观的”。在分析宗教思想的传播时，没有任何研究考虑过在容易相信的意义上在激发兴趣/记忆力和直觉之间的权衡。本文通过考虑几个直觉上容易相信的宗教概念（例如，不朽的灵魂、灵体、造物主上帝、公正的世界）来完成这项任务。有人认为，在典型的宗教中，这些概念被纳入神话。通过合并，这些概念会失去一些直观的可信度，但会引起兴趣/记忆力。