Individuals who have been subtly reminded of death display heightened in-group favouritism, or “worldview defense.” Terror management theory argues (i) that death cues engender worldview defense via psychological mechanisms specifically evolved to suppress death anxiety, and (ii) that the core function of religiosity is to suppress death anxiety. Thus, terror management theory predicts that ext...

The purpose of this study is to document the potential feasibility of using a bed net impregnation program to enhance the control of Malayan filariasis in southern Thailand. A survey was conducted in one Muslim and one Buddhist village along the swamp forest in Narathiwat Province. Face-to-face interview was employed to collect data on practice of bed net use, knowledge and attitudes on filaria...

"The age profiles of religious groups in Australia are changing at different rates. Most mainstream Christian denominations have a higher proportion of adherents aged 60 or more than does the population as a whole. In most cases the age profile of people who actually attend services is older again. This is especially true of people who attend the Uniting, Anglican and Presbyterian churches. The...

In a recent study Garfield (1975) found that psychedelic drug users, Zen meditators, and practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism expressed more accepting attitudes toward death than did graduate students in both psychology and religion; also, that Zen and Tibetan Buddhists were more accepting than the drug users. Garfield suggested that states of altered awareness, achieved through the use of drugs o...

Among the incidental features of Nāgārjuna’s philosophy that have captured my attention over the years, there are two in particular that I wish to discuss in this paper. The first observation is that his philosophical writings seem to have fascinated a large number of modern scholars of Buddhism; this hardly requires demonstration. The second observation is that Nāgārjuna’s writings had relativ...