ABSTRACT
Modern data on the effects of religious belief are less tidy and, perhaps, less heartening. The starting point is religion as beliefs. The fundamental premise of Social-Cognitive model is that the individual never approaches religious experience as a tabula rasa. Some relevant inclinations seem to be genetically predisposed. Religion is acquired through a combination of direct experience and secondary information. Since it is stored in memory, it is subject to the same biases as other material in long-term memory. W. Proudfoot and P. Shaver note that the psychology of religion has a plenitude of post hoc explanations. Religion is acquired through a combination of direct experience and secondary information. Since it is stored in memory, it is subject to the same biases as other material in long-term memory. Top-down, or concept-driven, processing is perception that is preceded and shaped by expectation.
