Competing Forces Account for the Stability and Evolution of Religious Beliefs

ABSTRACT Beebe and Duffy (2020) offer another addition to a growing body of theoretical and empirical work that questions the explanatory power of so-called minimal counterintuitiveness (MCI). On the basis of three memory experiments and one survey, Beebe and Duffy argue that 1) MCI concepts are at a mnemonic disadvantage relative to both concepts with moral valence as well as concepts that elicit existential anxiety; and 2) these results cannot be explained by the degree of visualizability in the test items. In this commentary, we reflect on the future of MCI theory and situate Beebe and Duffy’s study in an integrative cultural evolutionary framework. We argue that future studies in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion should not only focus on the content that makes some religious beliefs cognitively and culturally attractive but also on how different cultural evolutionary forces – including social and ecological contexts – compete and interact.