Hermeneutics and the philosophical future of religious studies -- - The present contenders: the hermeneutics of recollection and the hermeneutics of suspicion -- - The hermeneutics of contemplation -- - Beyond interpretation to contemplation -- - Beyond frameworks and grids to concept-formation -- - Suspicion about suspicion -- - The hermeneutics of contemplation and Wittgensteinian Fideism -- - Bernard Williams on the gods and us -- - Hermeneutics and modernity -- - Assumptions about the gods -- - Questioning the assumptions -- - Hume's legacy -- - Hume and hermeneutics -- - Hume's first level of criticism -- - Hume's second level of criticism -- - Hume's third level of criticism -- - Hume's 'true religion' -- - Hume on miracles -- - Beyond design to a song of creation -- - Hume's one-sided diet -- - Hume and us -- - Feuerbach: religion's secret? -- - Feuerbach and demystification -- - God among the predicates -- - God and the human species -- - Contradiction and contemplation -- - Death and finitude -- - Contemplating reactions to death -- - God and death -- - Conclusions about death -- - Marx and Engels: religion, alienation and compensation -- - Marxism and monism -- - Religion and ideology -- - Tylor and Frazer: are religious beliefs mistaken hypotheses? -- - Animism and intellectualism -- - Animism, souls and spirits -- - What rituals can be -- - Rituals and the mythology in our language -- - Rituals and explanations -- - Marett: primitive reactions -- - Marett and anti-intellectualism -- - Marett and suspicion -- - In the beginning was the dance -- - Marett's other course