Researchers at the UK's University of Oxford published findings on Friday that studied 100 writings, published between 1961 and 2014, that included stories about some 26,000 people around the world, documenting their feelings about death.
It may come as little surprise that those who espoused deep religious belief stated that they had little or no fear of their own death. But, remarkably, the study also showed that those on the opposite end of the faith spectrum — atheists — shared the same feelings.
Published in the journal Religion, Brain and Behavior, the study observed that those at the opposite ends of the bell curve of belief feared death much less than those described as "in between," according to Rawstory.com
The study's team leader, Jonathan Jong, research associate for the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology and research fellow at Coventry University, said, "This definitely complicates the old view, that religious people are less afraid of death than nonreligious people. It may well be that atheism also provides comfort from death, or that people who are just not afraid of death aren't compelled to seek religion."
About 18 percent of the study cases revealed that those with strong religious beliefs had an equally strong fear of death, thought to be a motivating aspect to their faith.
According to a 2016 Pew Research Center paper, atheism in the United States doubled between 2007 and 2014, rising to about 3.1 percent of the country's population. Over the same time period, Americans, who at over 60 percent of the population are overwhelmingly Christian, saw the number of those who feel that religion is important decline, from 36 percent to 30 percent.
