Hyperactive intentional stance looks at cognitive systems that generate effects resulting in the creation of religion. A mind conditioned to a set of thinking and biases creates forms of religions. Daniel C. Dennett observes that the first step to comprehend the human mind as a possible place for religion is through how we comprehend other minds. Hyperactive intentional stance looks at agents, which human beings conceive to have beliefs and desires just like themselves. This knowledgeable application of an intentional stance occurs naturally, influencing the human environment with folk psychology.
Factors, which influence the hyperactive intentional stance, include agents, beliefs, desires, and a common sense to act rationally, considering those beliefs and desires. The use of an intentional stance leads to competition. It is so powerful once adopted. It generates an innate urge that we find it difficult to drop.
Divination is an attempt to seeking god’s knowledge and communicating with him. Human beings found solace in divination. Divination enabled people to know what they wanted and gave them a reason for their wants and belief. Old folks discovered how to leave critical decision-making processes to uncontrollable forces. The significance of the effect of divination takes away the responsibility of decision-making and eliminates the challenges associated with the wrong decision made.
Scholars refer to divination as an exo-psychic method of thought process or decision-making. Divination rose in popularity, depending on the results generated. If one likes the results, then he or she would do it again and over. Others began to imitate them without prior knowledge. People thought that divination helped them sort out their predicaments. As a result, they clung to the practice. It made them feel better and relax without necessarily understanding its meaning.
Scholars look at the patterns of rituals performed by healers across different cultures all over the world. The findings concur with the argument that what people have discovered, over and over again, has a psychological effect, specifically the power of hypnotism. Healers treat these conditions by administering herbs, ingestion, or inhalation of hallucinogens or other mind-altering substances to alleviate symptoms accompanied by rituals.
Healer’s rituals consist of hypnotic inductions, which suggest that the client’s responses are equal to hypnosis. Hypnosis responses provide some of the features of rituals and beliefs found almost in every religion. Daniel C. Dennett indicates that about 15 percent of the human population shows strong hypnotism tendencies. He further suggests that shamans are biologically inheritance along cultural lines. The inheritance depends on vertical cultural transmission of the shamanic powers from parent to child.
Folk religions emanated from the daily activities of people living in small groups and shared general features among them. Memes of folk religion became deeply domesticated in human lives. Memetic drives are possible and account for preferences of rituals. People will respond to culturally transmitted rituals, thus creating a new selective environment where talent and appreciation of the quirk genetically influence selection of memes.
The emergence of the folk religions through hyperactive intentional stance, hypnosis and memetic selection cannot be scientifically verified. These views assume that folk religions emerged without any conscious or careful design. It is almost impossible to prove that folk religions emerged as a result of interdependent processes of biological and cultural changes. The belief of man in god depends on quick and instinct natural responses. These are under the influences of agencies such as beliefs, desires and mental states that move individuals.