Death anxiety and religious belief: an existential psychology of religion

Is it true that ‘…if man did not die, if he lived forever, if there were no such thing as death, there would be no religion’ (Feuerbach, 1851, 1967, 33)? Are we so scared of death that we try to pursue symbolic and literal immortality? This intriguing book aims to shed light on Feuerbach’s contention – and the more recent assertions of Terror Management Theory empirically, and by means of some ingeniously thought-out methods. Of course, anyone expecting simple and definitive answers to these questions will be disappointed – but probably shouldn’t expect a clear-cut resolution to matters which have occupied the minds of thinkers such as Feuerbach, Freud, Becker and Marx, to name a few.