Psychologists have found a connection between religion and fear of death
Researchers from Oxford and Melbourne universities have studied the fear of death to atheists, religious, and true religious people and found some interesting results.
Psychologists have analyzed 100 scientific articles published from 1961 to 2014, which contained information about the death of 26 000 people. By combining these data, the researchers found that the higher the level of religiosity is associated with low fear of death, reports the portal Phis.org.
The “outwardly religious” people feared death more than the true believers.
Under external religiosity scientists understand the behavior that is motivated by pragmatic considerations, for example, the social benefits of religion.
Other psychologists found that 18% of people who consider themselves believers, the more afraid of death than atheists. The picture was more mixed: more than half of the studied information in General has not shown any connection between religiosity and fear of death.
The study addressed only to the United States and a bit of the Middle East with East Asia, so it is difficult to assess how the results vary depending on cultural and religious traditions.
Anyway, work psychologists have questioned the belief that only religious people are not afraid of death: atheists who are simply not afraid to die, there is no need to seek salvation in religion.