Religion engenders conflict and cooperation. Defining religion is a prerequisite for pondering this paradox. Scholars define religion in several ways (Roberts 2004). Functional definitions focus on what religion does for adherents, such as providing a perspective from which to interpret the world, helping cope with life's trials, and addressing concerns about the purpose of life and eventuality...

Wallace Ruddell Aykroyd (1899–1979) had an English father, whose business was in Ireland, and an Irish mother. He attended high school in England as a boarder and then joined the Royal Air Force. After the end of World War I he returned to Ireland for medical studies at Trinity College, Dublin (1,2). In 1924 he graduated as Bachelor of Medicine and also received the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for ...

After a brief introduction to psychology of religion as a scientific discipline, this article reviews psychological theories that propose explanations of religion as an individual and social reality, and provides information from recent empirical literature that, at least partially, confirms these theories. The theoretical and empirical evidence presented here encompasses a variety of psycholog...

Today we can observe a trend of rapid institutional renaissance religion in the public space. Tra-ditional religious values and institutions that have historically existed throughout society are undergoing significant changes, primarily affecting perceptions importance faith belief. With emer-gence civil society, is recognized as one basic acquires fundamentally new meaning. Therefore, it be st...

OBJECTIVES Common facets of religion are those aspects of religion that can be shared by people from any racial group. In contrast, unique facets of religion are available only to people in specific racial groups. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the interface among common facets of religion, unique facets of religion, and life satisfaction in a nationwide sample of older Black people. ...

The ’ontic’ form of structural realism (OSR), roughly speaking, aims at a complete elimination of objects of the discourse of scientific theories, leaving us with structures only. As put by the defenders of such a claim, the idea is that all there is are structures and, if the relevant structures are to be set theoretical constructs, as it has also been claimed, then the relations which appear ...

Surprisingly little research has examined the widely held assumption that religion and spirituality are generally helpful in adjusting to bereavement. A systematic literature search located 73 empirical articles that examined religion/spirituality in the context of bereavement. The authors describe the multidimensional nature of religion/spirituality and use this framework to organize and integ...

This article surveys the experimental economics approach to the study of religion. The field has a place in the context of the scientific study of religion generally and the social psychology of religion in particular, but employs distinct economic methods which promise new and different insights. In particular, certain features of the experimental approach as used by economists such as incenti...