There are no atheists in foxholes; or so we hear. The thought that the fear of death motivates religious belief has been around since the earliest speculations about the origins of religion. There are hints of this idea in the ancient world, but the theory achieves prominence in the works of Enlightenment critics and Victorian theorists of religion, and has been further developed by contemporary cognitive scientists. Why do people believe in gods? Because they fear death.
Yet despite the abiding appeal of this simple hypothesis, there has not been a systematic attempt to evaluate its central claims and the assumptions underlying them. Do human beings fear death? If so, who fears death more, religious or nonreligious people? Do reminders of our mortality really motivate religious belief? Do religious beliefs actually provide comfort against the inevitability of death?
In Death Anxiety and Religious Belief, Jonathan Jong and Jamin Halberstadt begin to answer these questions, drawing on the extensive literature on the psychology of death anxiety and religious belief, from childhood to the point of death, as well as their own experimental research on conscious and unconscious fear and faith. In the course of their investigations, they consider the history of ideas about religion's origins, challenges of psychological measurement, and the very nature of emotion and belief.
eBook - PDF
Death Anxiety and Religious Belief
An Existential Psychology of Religion
- 250 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
Death Anxiety and Religious Belief
An Existential Psychology of Religion
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Information
e
Whats
and
Whys
of
Religious Belief
25
2012),
which
is
the
central
concern
of
this
book.
As
we
shall
see,
the
thought
that
death
and
religion
are
intimately
connected
is
one
that
has
occurred
to
many
theorists
of
religion,
including
most
of
those
we
have
already
met
in
this
chapter.
ere
has,
since
the
very
beginning
of
our
theorizing
about
religion,
been
speculation
about
how
religion
is
somehow,
at
least
in
part,
about
death
,
about
our
inability
to
really
conceptualize
it
despite
its
looming
inevitability,
about
our
ambivalent
relationships
with
corpses
and
those
who
have
leſt
them
behind,
about
our
multifarious
fears
and
worries
surrounding
that
most
certain
of
human
fates.
Gods
are,
so
many
have
thought,
ultimately
about
mortals.
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1. The Whats and Whys of Religious Belief
- 2. A History of Thanatocentric Theories of Religion
- 3. Measuring Faith and Fear
- 4. Are People Afraid of Death?
- 5. The Religious Correlates of Death Anxiety
- 6. Death Anxiety and Religion: Causes and Consequences
- 7. The Future of Immortality, Literal and Symbolic
- Notes
- References
- Index
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Yes, you can access Death Anxiety and Religious Belief by Jonathan Jong,Jamin Halberstadt in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Psychology of Religion. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.