OBJECTIVES Common facets of religion are those aspects of religion that can be shared by people from any racial group. In contrast, unique facets of religion are available only to people in specific racial groups. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the interface among common facets of religion, unique facets of religion, and life satisfaction in a nationwide sample of older Black people. ...

The ’ontic’ form of structural realism (OSR), roughly speaking, aims at a complete elimination of objects of the discourse of scientific theories, leaving us with structures only. As put by the defenders of such a claim, the idea is that all there is are structures and, if the relevant structures are to be set theoretical constructs, as it has also been claimed, then the relations which appear ...

Surprisingly little research has examined the widely held assumption that religion and spirituality are generally helpful in adjusting to bereavement. A systematic literature search located 73 empirical articles that examined religion/spirituality in the context of bereavement. The authors describe the multidimensional nature of religion/spirituality and use this framework to organize and integ...

This article surveys the experimental economics approach to the study of religion. The field has a place in the context of the scientific study of religion generally and the social psychology of religion in particular, but employs distinct economic methods which promise new and different insights. In particular, certain features of the experimental approach as used by economists such as incenti...

In a recent work inspired by Borgman's [1] approach to exploring issues at the intersection of information and reality, Chapman [2] outlined a framework for thinking about issues at the intersection of information and religion, viz. information about religion, information for religion, and information as religion. This framework might be complemented by another in which the same issues – that i...

Current cognitive approaches to religion maintain that religion evolved as a byproduct of cognitive mechanisms that were naturally selected for functions unrelated to religion. In the present chapter we argue that it is necessary to widen the scope of analyses to encompass religious concepts, behavior, and sharedness, and how they interact with each other and with the environment. This approach...

Despite recent advances in the field of religion and health, meaningful findings will increasingly depend on the capacity to conceptualize "religion" properly. To date, scientists' conception of religion has been shaped by the Enlightenment paradigm. However, recent developments in philosophy make the "objectivity" of the Enlightenment paradigm problematic, if not untenable. Contrary to common ...