How do you become religious? What is a conversion experience? Does it happen all at once or gradually? What's the point of religion, anyway? These are questions that JF (a Catholic) and Phil (a Zennist) have often been asked since starting Weird Studies, and in this episode they attempt some answers.

Image: "Small Candle Flame" by Le Priyavrat, via Wikimedia Commons

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REFERENCES

Ross Douthat, Believe  

Dogen, Shobogenzo  

New Atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism 

Weird Studies, Episode 99 on “Wild, Wild Country”

William James, Varieties of Religious Experience  

George Steiner, Real Presences

Patrick Curry, Art and Enchantment

Max Picard, The Flight from God

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age

James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

Richard Wagner, Ring Cycle

Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense

Weird Studies, Episode 183 on “Siddhartha”

Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher

Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”  

Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot

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