The cultural production of ignorance to rationalize away inconvenient truths is called "religious agnomancy" (the premeditated, orchestrated, and strategic creation and perpetuation of false knowing). The goal of agnomancy is the suppression of knowledge. Think of what the tobacco companies did to convince people that smoking was safe and nonaddicting.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in the construction and exploitation of ignorance, with the establishment of a field of agnotology (ignorance studies). This effort has focused almost exclusively on governments and corporations, though little or none on religion. After exploring work in agnotology and introducing the concept of agnomancy (the creation or conjuring of ignorance), Dr. David Eller offers a preliminary application of these perspectives to religion, investigating what light agnotology sheds on religion and when and for what reasons religion engages in agnomancy.

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