Death anxiety and religious belief : an existential psychology of religion / Jonathan Jong and Jamin Halberstadt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jong, Jonathan, author.

Series:

Scientific studies of religion (Bloomsbury (Firm))

Scientific studies of religion: inquiry and explanation

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion--Philosophy.

Religion.

Fear of death.

Psychology, Religious.

Physical Description:

xiv, 232 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Summary:

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? 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.

Contents:

The whats and whys of religious belief

A history of thanatocentric theories of religion

Measuring faith and fear

Are people afraid of death?

The religious correlates of death anxiety

Death anxiety and religion: causes and consequences

The future of immortality, literal, and symbolic.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Jong, Jonathan, author. Death, anxiety, and religious belief.

ISBN:

9781472571625

1472571622

OCLC:

929122936