ABSTRACT
This chapter previews ideas, concepts, and theoretical propositions that the author will fill in with more detail in the chapters that follow. It begins by asking the reader to examine his/her own thoughts and experiences of life, the universe, and everything. The author asks us not to be silent or blind in the face of death, the void, infinity, and nothingness. Drawing on the momentous developments of the nineteenth century in the West that included the loss of faith and the consolidation of the idea that God is a human creation, the author asks why these developments have failed to register with the masses. Sociology and anthropology help us understand both these momentous developments and their failure to register. The chapter includes an “intervention” by Karl Marx on religion (it is much more than “the opium of the people”), history as a reservoir of resources for the sociology of religion and the gods, the dangers of writing and speaking truth to power, and a brief introduction to reading religion and prophets: concise case studies of the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Jesus, Muhammad, and Joseph Smith, as well as reflections on the Jefferson Bible, and the religion clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Appendix A is a summary review of the demography of religion in the world.
