There is a vast number of potential religious concepts, beliefs, and practices. Is there something that religious concepts have in common that explains why they have been preserved and passed down to new generations?

Regarding the science of religion, most of the theoretical contributions have been made from the field of cognitive science. From cognitive science perspective, Boyer introduces the idea of a template that allows for quick development of more particular concepts. We have only a small number of templates such as person, animal, object. Boyer’s thesis regarding religious concepts is that they are anomalous, in that they add a special tag that violates one or a few characteristics contributed by the template. Some examples, a spirit violates the PERSON template by adding to it that it has no body. An omniscient God is created from the PERSON template with added special cognitive powers.

From among an infinite number of possible religious concepts, the ones we actually find in the world have survived and spread because they have this feature of minimal anomalousness. So, they are concepts that are easily formed by slight alteration of a template and they happen to be more memorable simply as a result of how the human mind or brain works.

In addition, we have inference systems that are turned on by different kinds of entities. These are sometimes called cognitive modules. To the extent, then, that religious concepts have enough in common with ordinary concepts, they set off these inference systems, and this makes some sets of beliefs about the relevant entities natural, and therefore likely to be understood, remembered, elaborated in specific ways, and passed on to others.

Boyer says that a typical assumption by and about religious believers is that belief in gods or spirits comes first, and then both religious practices and moral prescriptions follow. Boyer believes that morality and religious practices take priority, and both of these make religious belief more plausible.

Our evolution as a social species is sufficient to explain our shared morality. However, without an evolutionary explanation, humans through the ages have needed some other explanation (Boyer, 1998).

In terms of a science of religion, it can be said that as human brains have evolved to work in ways that suited us for survival in our early environments, religious concepts, belief systems, practices, and rituals are natural by-products of these cognitive processes.