How Psychological Dispositions Influence the Theology of the Afterlife

Cruz, Helen De; Smedt, Johan V. De

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-48609-7_22

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Studies have shown that people have a tendency to look forward to their future journeys optimistically even in the absence of reasonable justifications for this optimism (Van Boven et al 2008). This cognitive disposition may influence people's views of life after death (De Cruz and De Smedt 2017). However, the Qur'an warns of this phenomenon and this misconception in afterlife beliefs:…”

Section: Discussion and Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Heaven or to Hell: Are Muslims’ Afterlife Hope and Fear Balanced? A Cross-Cultural Study

Al-Issa

Krauss

Roslan

et al. 2020

Review of Religious Research

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Islamic theology emphasizes the importance of achieving balance (equilibrium) between afterlife hope and fear for spiritual health. This study is a preliminary step to measure this phenomenon among young Muslims. The aim of this study is to examine afterlife expectations balance by developing new survey measures of afterlife hope expectations (AHE) and afterlife fear expectations (AFE). After validating the content of both measures, data were collected from Jordanian university students ( N = 605) and Malaysian university students ( N = 303). Exploratory and confirmatory analyses support the validity of the AHE and AFE. The results from both countries indicate a high level of AHE and a low level of AFE among Muslim youth. Potential implications on spiritual health and recommendations for future research are discussed.

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Section: Discussion and Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Heaven or to Hell: Are Muslims’ Afterlife Hope and Fear Balanced? A Cross-Cultural Study

Al-Issa

Krauss

Roslan

et al. 2020

Review of Religious Research

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“…Religious beliefs reflect enduring propensities of human cognition. For example, the fact that people believe in an afterlife may be the result of several cognitive dispositions, including the inability to imagine oneself as no longer existing and the ability to think about the mental states of others (De Cruz & De Smedt, 2017). Someone's physical death is no obstacle to continue to attribute mental states to them; we do not need the physical presence of a person to continue to think about what they would say or do, so once that person is separated from us by death, it is straightforward to imagine their continued physical and mental states.…”

Section: Three Assumptions Of Csrmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Challenge of Evolution to Religion

Smedt

Cruz

2019

Self Cite

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Religion and science are in a peculiar tension, because they have an asymmetric dependence relationship. Some fundamental metaphysical presuppositions of science are religious in origin. At the same time, science questions these religious assumptions.To see this tension at work, consider miracles and their relationship to laws of nature.The Christian doctrine of creation holds that an intelligent creator designed the world, according to intelligible and orderly laws. This conception of the world as governed by laws that are discoverable by human minds inspired natural philosophers in the early seventeenth century, such as René Descartes, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, to formulate their mechanistic conceptions of the world. Some natural philosophers, such as Bernard Nieuwentyt and John Ray, believed that experimental science provided clear evidence for divine design: it shows how ingenious and intelligently designed the laws of nature are. However, an unintended consequence of this line of thinking was that miracles -a central element of Christian doctrine, for instance, in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth -had become all but impossible. Miracles constituted, per definition, a violation of the laws of nature, although there were minority views such as Samuel Clarke's that saw miracles as merely surprising or unusual. The laws of nature were exceptionless. This gave rise to an unstable conception of miracles as events that violated immutable laws of nature (Harrison, 1995). As a result, miracles became improbable, and the testimony to such events highly suspect, exemplified in David Hume's (1748) argument against miracles.The Fall narrative provides another example of how science undermines the religious

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“…Unlike in Christianity, where marriage is dissolved upon the death of one of the partners, Mormons can opt to be “sealed” in the temple so that their marriage continues after death. Parent–child relationships also continue into the afterlife (see also De Cruz and De Smedt, in press, for an exploration of Mormon afterlife theology).…”

Section: Three Examples Of Philosophical Ideas Explored In Speculativmentioning

confidence: 99%