SOURCE: "Peirce's Theological Semiotic," in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 67, No. 4, October, 1987, pp. 493-509.

In the following excerpt, Raposa explores Peirce's religious nature as a backdrop for the entirety of his writings.

Charles Peirce described his essay, "A Neglected Argument for The Reality of God," as the "poor sketch" of an argument; he intended that it should function as a "table of contents" on the basis of which others might be able to "guess" what he had to say. I propose to fill in some of the details of that sketch, to suggest the sort of text that Peirce might have written, given the table of contents that he provided. Such a project requires a certain amount of "guesswork," but those guesses are both educated ones and fewer in number than one might expect. This is the case because Peirce's reflections on religious topics are continuous with, even...