Economics and Religion This paper provides an overview of the relationship between economics and religion. It first considers the effects of economic incentives in the religious marketplace on consumers’ demand for “religion.” It then shows how this demand affects religious institutions and generates a supply of religious goods and services. Other topics include the structure of this religious ...

Vaccination is considered to be one of the greatest public health achievements in the 20th century, which has helped to build a society free of vaccine preventable diseases and save lives of millions children across the globe (1). However, in the 21st century, pediatric practice in the western world witnesses an era of vaccination refusal (2). Pediatricians, infectious disease experts, and publ...

We propose an integrative cognitive neuroscience framework for understanding the cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Our analysis reveals 3 psychological dimensions of religious belief (God's perceived level of involvement, God's perceived emotion, and doctrinal/experiential religious knowledge), which functional MRI localizes within networks processing Theory of Mind regardin...

Religious belief in its most ideal form can be seen as a powerful force to create purposive transformations by transmitting ecologically positive habit of practice and attitudes of mind to succeeding generations that share similar religious beliefs. This concept assumes even greater significance on considering howmore than half of the world’s population embraces some sort of religious beliefs t...

Governments may also use religious soft power in pursuit of national interests and objectives. This article focuses on the role of religious soft power in the foreign policy of three states – the United States of America, India and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The main concern is to assess religious actors’ contribution to the foreign policy environment and agenda in each country. The idea of ...

A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations...

French Catholic participants (N = 340) with high or low religious identification read 1 of 8 scenarios presented as an interview with a female target 2 months after she had had an abortion. The experimental device varied situational pressure (pressure vs. no pressure), the target's religious social identity (Catholic vs. neutral), and the consequences of abortion for the target (positive vs. ne...

Religious coping now represents a key variable of interest in research on health outcomes, not only because many individuals turn to their faith in times of illness, but also because studies have frequently found that religious coping is associated with desirable health outcomes. The purpose of this article is to familiarize readers with recent investigations of religious coping in samples with...

BACKGROUND Although prior research indicates that religious and spiritual coping is associated with positive health outcomes, few studies have examined religious and spiritual coping among patients with emphysema. OBJECTIVE To describe the utilization of religious and spiritual coping and its relationship to quality of life among patients with emphysema, in a 2-year longitudinal follow-up st...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether spiritual and religious identities predict complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use above and beyond other known influences such as gender, region of residence, social status, personality, health, and access to conventional medicine. METHODS Analyzing data from the 1995-1996 National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (n=3032), this study...