God in the Fractals: Recursiveness as a Key to Religious Behavior

Many religious traditions embrace ideas that include boundless elements (i.e., beings that are omnipresent, omniscient, etc.). The origin of ideas with such boundless qualities has not yet been successfully accounted for in the cognitive science of religion. In this study I suggest that the domain-general use of recursion underlies the mental representation of boundless qualities. I also examine the contribution of recursive patterns to other aspects of religiosity: the conceptualization of divine agency and the emergence of magical rituals. I suggest that the human ability to use recursion in a domain-general way is minimally required for the human Faculty of Religion in a Narrow Sense.