a little belief is a big thing for death thoughts

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Fear of death: worst if you're a little religious?

 

A new study tries to explain why moderately religious people fear

death more than either the strongly religious or total nonbelievers

do.

 

 

Special to World Science

 

Most people think religion eases the fear of death. But studies have

found that's not necessarily true.

 

Although very religious people fear death the least, studies suggest,

total unbelievers take second place for ability to take their

mortality in stride. The worst death anxieties haunt those who lie

somewhere in between those extremes—who are a little religious.

 

A new study has backed up these findings, and provided some tentative

explanations for the surprising phenomenon.

 

For some of those in the unlucky category of " moderately religious, "

the study's authors found, the explanation may be grimly

straightforward. They're afraid of punishment in the afterlife, such

as going to hell.

 

Many of these people believe in a God, but don't go to church, pray

or otherwise follow through much on that belief. This may " raise the

specter of punishment after death without hope for salvation, " wrote

the researchers, Paul Wink and Julia Scott of Wellesley College in

Wellesley, Mass., in a paper describing the findings.

 

Fear of death " was particularly characteristic of individuals whose

belief in a rewarding afterlife was not matched by their other

religious beliefs and practices, " they added.

 

Divine punishment may be a less troublesome prospect to strongly

religious people, who tend to be more confident of their merit.

Atheists don't worry about it for obvious reasons.

 

Another reason some slightly religious people fear death more may be

that they sometimes question whether an afterlife exists at all, the

researchers wrote.

 

Such doubts might not plague more hard-core believers. And atheists

may cope by focusing on ways to achieve at least a " symbolic

immortality, " such as through children or creative works.

 

Being only moderately religious is common in the United States, the

authors wrote. They cited figures showing that while four in five

American Christians believe in an afterlife, only slightly over half

of those, or 44 percent, go to church regularly.

 

It seems " firmness and consistency of beliefs and practices, rather

than religiousness per se, buffers against death anxiety in old age, "

Wink and Scott wrote.

 

In their study, they surveyed 155 people in their late 60s or 70s who

were born in Berkeley, Calif. Their findings replicated, among

elderly people, the results of past studies with younger people

showing that the moderately religious fear death the most.

 

They also found that strongly religious people feared death the

least. The least religious were in between, but slightly closer to

the moderately religious.

 

The researchers said their study had some weaknesses, including a

relatively small sample size. Other studies should be done with

larger samples and including a greater variety of religious

denominations, they said.

 

The study also didn't examine how people with unconventional

spiritual beliefs, unconnected to organized religion, handled fear of

death. This should be a subject of future studies as well, they

wrote.

 

Another finding from their study was that, at least for some people,

fear of the dying process itself seems to lessens with age. People in

their mid-70s who had experienced more illness and bereavement,

perhaps paradoxically, were found to fear death less than those in

their late 60s.

 

a posting by......bob