TMT and Religion
TMT posits that religion was created as a means for humans to cope with their own mortality. Supporting this, arguments in favor of life after death, and simply being religious, reduce the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense and thoughts of death have been found to increase religious beliefs. At an implicit, subconscious level, this is the case even for atheists.
Read more about this topic: Terror Management Theory
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“It must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of human race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to polytheism and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principle or opinion.
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—David Hume (1711–1776)