Fear of Death Makes People Into Believers (of Science)

sciencehabit writes "Nothing, some say, turns an atheist into a believer like the fear of death. 'There are no atheists in foxholes,' the saying goes. But a new study suggests that people in stressful situations don't always turn to a higher power. Sometimes, they turn to science. Both athletes preparing for a big race and students asked to write about their own death showed a 15% stronger belief in science than those under less stressful situations (abstract). 'In stressful situations people are likely to turn to whatever worldviews and beliefs are most meaningful to them,' says study co-author, Anna-Kaisa Newheiser, a psychologist at Yale University. And many people find the scientific worldview more compatible with their own."

Comments

Re:Do humans cause birth defects and disease as we

[Anonymous Coward]

Such things are only a consequence of being separated from God

Being separated from God is, in fact, a consequence of some decisions that were made by humans a long time ago... so yes, humans did cause that. Invalidating the consequences would be to invalidate the purpose of giving them free will as well, even if we want to argue that in hindsight it was apparently a stupid thing to have ever given them a choice that could have such repercussions even after so much time had passed. Nonetheless, those people are still held accountable for having made such choices. The suffering today we have for choices that we did not make is temporary... theirs is eternal.

Now precisely by what mechanism a decision to disobey God could actually cause such things to happen in the first place isn't necessarily something we need to know... it might give us some closure, but that's about it. God isn't particularly interested in catering to the human need for closure, however, or else God would have communicated such information to us already.