Who’s afraid of dying?
An Oxford University-led international research study on dying and who fears it most has found atheists are among those least afraid of leaving this life.
Very religious people don’t fear dying much either.
However, the researchers found that people who are religious for its social or emotional benefits suffered the most from “death anxiety”.
They defined death anxiety as “the persistent fear of one’s own demise”.
In a paper published in Religion, Brain and Behavior, the researchers discussed their project and its findings.
Their research involved reviewing all the robust, available data from high quality international studies to see if religion, with its promise of afterlife does reduce fear of death.
“Meta-analyses are statistical procedures used to extract and combine the findings of multiple studies.
“This produces a better estimate of the consensus in a field than looking at individual studies,” explains Dr Jonathan Jong, a Research Associate at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology and Research Fellow at Coventry University.
Jong led the international research team, which included members from Otago University.
Source
- PhysOrg
- Daily Mail
- Image: Sepeb.com
