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Payne: Cognitive Theories of Ritual and Buddhist Practice 77kinds of “natural” or “intuitive” categories established by Keil’s researchgrounds the notion of the counter-intuitive, Pyyiäinen cites Boyer for twospecific ways in which counter-intuitive ideas are created: transference ofqualities appropriate to one category to another where those qualities arenot appropriate, and violation of the boundaries of an intuitive category:It is important to bear in mind that counter-intuitiveness consistsprecisely of violations against or tranferences across the boundariesbetween ontological categories. “Counter-intuitive” is not bydefinition the same as “false,” “ridiculous,” or “odd.” Counterintuitivenessalso contradicts intutive expectations; it is thereforepossible that a believer finds some familiar counter-intuitive representationsas being quite natural, because this judgement ismade at the level of explicit knowledge. 10This notion of the counter-intuitive is strengthened as a definition forreligion by recent research that has demonstrated the fact that counterintuitiveideas are more memorable than intuitive ones: “optimally counterintuitiveideas are better recalled than ordinary or overly counter-intuitiveones, and thus are also more effectively distributed.” 11 In other words, if anidea is unusual but not obviously implausible, then we are more likely toremember it, and it is more likely that we will share it with others. If weconsider the prevalence and similarity of miracle stories in so manydifferent religious traditions, as well as the speed with which conspiracytheories propagate in society, this concept may be less implausible than itperhaps seems upon first hearing. “Counter-intuitiveness has also beenshown to enhance the recall of items in experimental conditions. Thisenhanced recall may explain—ceteris paribus—why counter-intuitive representationsseem so easily to become widespread in and across cultures.”12 As explified in the notion of “optimally counter-intuitive,” religiousrepresentations are not simply counter-intuitive, but rather formpart of a system of beliefs, some of which are intuitive, while others arecounter-intuitive:[C]ounter-intuitive representations form only one aspect of religiouscognition, the other being that counter-intuitive representationsare embedded in intuitive ones. . . . It is the intuitive aspectsof religious representations that make them understandable andlearnable, but it is the counter-intuitive aspect that makes themreligious. 13The idea that there are benevolent elders, perhaps aunts and uncles, whomight come to one’s assistance in times of need is an intuitive one based onour experience of social categories, causal relations, ontological statuses,