Sheldon Solomon talks about Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death (1973) to explain how fear of death, and denial thereof, is a central determinant of human behavior. He and his colleagues created Terror Management Theory and demonstrated empirically that death denial underlies human prejudice and violent conflict. More important for this talk, however, is research suggesting that the enabling and ennobling illusions of religion/spirituality have psychologically beneficial effects. These findings are at odds with current thinking by evolutionary psychologists that supernatural religious beliefs are non-adaptive or intrinsically malignant. See www.ernestbecker.org for more information. See www.ernestbecker.org for more information.
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