Are You Afraid to Die? Researchers Reveal Surprising Ties … – CBN News

A new study has found that religious individuals and atheists might actuallyshare a shocking similarity: both are among the least afraid of dying,according to at least some of the surveys and articles included in the meta-analysis.

Researchers at the University of Oxford, among other colleges, explored some of the most intriguing international studies that have explored the relationship between the levels of peoples faith and their fear or anxiety associated withdying.

While the assumption has long been that the more religious one is the less likely he or she is to fear death, researchers came to a complicated conclusion after analyzing 100 articles from between 1961-2014 thatrepresented a total of26,000 people.

READ: Princeton Rescinds Award From Tim Keller, Despite Having the SAME Views as the Awards Namesake

It shows that the very religious and atheists are the groups who do not fear death as much as much as those in-between, the University of Oxfordsaid in a press release, noting that the results were published in the journalReligion, Brain and Behavior.

While religious people were found to haveless anxiety about dying in some of the associated studies, atheists too at least in some investigations are apparently not too worried about what happens in the afterlife.The press releasehas more:

The meta-analysis showed that while people who were intrinsically religious enjoyed lower levels of death anxiety, those who were extrinsically religious revealed higher levels of death anxiety.

The findings were mixed across the studies, with only 30% of the effects showing this finding. Surprisingly, perhaps, 18% of the studies found that religious people were more afraid of death than non-religious people; and over half the research showed no link at all between the fear of death and religiosity. This mixed picture shows that the relationship between religiosity and death anxiety may not be fixed, but may differ from context to context. Most of the studies were conducted in the United States, with a small number carried out in the Middle East and East Asia. This makes it difficult to estimate how the pattern varies from culture to culture, or religion to religion, says the paper.

In the end, theres a complex paradigm at work, with researchers wondering whether theres an upside-down U dynamic in which religious people and nonbelievers have lower anxiety about death, with others in between having increased fears.

More research is needed to more firmly understand the issues at hand, expertssaid.

This definitely complicates the old view, that religious people are less afraid of death than nonreligious people, saidDr. Jonathan Jong,a research associateat Coventry UniversitysInstitute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. It may well be that atheism also provides comfort from death, or that people who are just not afraid of death arent compelled to seek religion.

Read more about the meta-analysishere.

(H/T:Daily Mail)

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Billy Hallowell

Billy Hallowell has been working in journalism and media for more than a decade. His writings have appeared in Deseret News, TheBlaze, Human Events, Mediaite and on FoxNews.com, among other outlets. Hallowell has a B.A. in journalism and broadcasting from the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York and an M.S. in social research from Hunter College in Manhattan, New York.

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Are You Afraid to Die? Researchers Reveal Surprising Ties ... - CBN News