A team of scientists at the University of Oxford found that committed atheists fear death no more than ardent followers of any religion hoping for a life in heaven. Researchers looked at the link between religiosity and anxiety about death to see if hoping for a higher power helps us come to terms with the fact that everyone will ever die. Scientific work was carried out within the framework of the terror management theory, which states that the desire to live and the fear of death are constantly fighting in a person. It was this conflict, according to the adherents of the theory, that led to the emergence of culture and religion.
Experts collated data on 26 thousand participants in 100 studies conducted between 1961 and 2014. It turned out that people who fervently believed - in their god, in life after death, in reincarnation - were not so much afraid of dying. At the same time, those of them who had internal religiosity (that is, religion was valuable for them) showed less fear in the face of death than those for whom external religiosity was characteristic (that is, such people used religion rather as a means to achieve their goals).
The theory of managing fear of death also implies that atheists are not overly afraid of death, as if they were anxious about it, they would turn to religion. Of the 11 studies that atheists participated in, 10 supported this hypothesis. Most atheists had no fear of their own demise. Thus, said researcher Jonathon Jong, the popular belief that religious people fear death less than atheists is not true. In fact, everything depends only on the strength of beliefs.
