Abstract

Something surprising about Charles S. Peirce scholarship throughout the years has been the scarce attention paid to the religious dimensions of Peirce's thought. The aim of this paper is to highlight that for Peirce the belief in God is not only a natural product of abduction, of the "rational instinct" or from the educated guess of the scientist or the lay man, but also that the abduction of God is for him the “proof” of pragmatism. Not only the belief in God is able to change the behavior of the believer, but according to Peirce —in "A Neglected Argument of the Reality of God" and other places— the reality of God gives meaning to the whole scientific enterprise.