Pascal Boyer's model of religious concept acquisition.

In Boyer's model, children are inherently attracted to religious concepts because these concepts violate their expectations in important ways. Just like Jesus' unearthly return flying in the face of the natural order of things, or a dead bodiless person who can walk through walls, or a statue weeping blood, religious concepts are really good at catching our attention and thus sinking into our memories. In other words, their counter-intuitiveness makes them really sticky and hard to shake. This is why Richard Dawkins says they're a bit like virulent germs, but Boyer's model is much more nuanced, and far less vituperative, than that.