The Mysteries of Religion: An Introduction to Philosophy through Religion

Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
	On Being Religious
	Religion and Religions
	On Being Sacred
	Philosophical Analysis
	Further reading
2. The Natural History of Religion
	Sacred History and the Great Religions
	Naturalistic Explanation
	Sacred Explanations, and Extraterrestrials
	Natural Fact, Sacred Value and British Israel
	Religious Feeling and Intellectual Virtue
	Further reading
3. Rituals and Rites of Passage
	Beginnings and Endings
	The Logical Impossibility of Change
	Realism and Ritual Truths
	Further reading
4. Words and the Word
	Sentences and How They Mean
	Anti-Realists and Magicians
	The Three Ways
	The Way of Negation
	The Angel of the Book
	Science and Piety
	Further reading
5. New Souls and the Olympians
	One Self and Many Selves
	Hebrews and Hellenes
	Are There Really Gods?
	Further reading
6. Sins, Wickedness and Psychosis
	Morality and God’s Command
	Purity and Pollution
	Devotion and Atonement
	Selfhood and the God Within
	Religion as Psychosis?
	Further reading
7. Causality and Creation
	The Argument from Design
	Sectarians and Deists
	The Dragon in the Deeps
	The Real and the Unreal
	Further reading
8. War and the Problem of Evil
	The Problems of Evil
	Rewriting the Abrahamic Axioms
	Punishment
	War in Heaven
	Further reading
9. Prayer, Sacrifice and Time
	Before All Worlds
	Sharing in the Feast
	Contemplation and Worship
	The Eternal Return
	Humility and Self-Sacrifice
	Further reading
10. Household, Sex and Gender
	Due Order in Society and Cosmos
	Sex, Families and Phalansteries
	Mother-Goddess and Father-God
	Further reading
11. Death and Immortality
	Individuals and the Eternal Earth
	Souls
	Bodily Resurrection
	Love and the Individual Creature
	Reincarnation
	Waking Up
	Further reading
12. Religious Experience
	Emotional Participation
	Solitary Experience
	Santa Claus and Visionary Evidence
	Experiencing the Infinite
	The Way of Negation
	The Sense of Being Loved
	The Sense of Being Loved
13. The Future of Religion
	Prayer and Obedience
	This-Worldly Visions
	The End of the World
	Further reading
14. Reasons and Conclusions
	Reasons for Believing
	The Case against Heresy
	The Nature of Authority
	Pascal’s Wager
	Further reading
Bibliography