The Heart of a Heartless World: Religion as Ideology

Both Marxist social theory and Freudian psychology claim to provide deep insights into the nature of religious belief.

The former seeks to explain the origin and development of religion in economic and political life, while the latter focuses upon the role of the family and of unconscious mental forces.

This book provides an accessible introduction to these ideas. It shows how Marxism and psychoanalysis can cast light upon major currents of religious thinking from stone age times through to the modern world.

Topics covered include the religious beliefs of hunter-gatherers, shamanism, goddess worship in Neolithic times, religion and ecology, religion and the origin of the state, Jesus as magician or social revolutionary, the psychology and politics of celibacy and mythico-religious dimensions of modern physics.