This is a fascinating article about a study showing that there is a correlation between people seeking aggressive end-of-life care and their religious convictions. I initially assumed that people without strong religious beliefs would be more inclined toward last ditch efforts following a terminal prognosis. It would seem to make sense that people confident in a blissful afterlife would find death an acceptable transition point. However, the study shows just the opposite:

While most patients, religious or not, avoid aggressive end-of-life therapy to prolong their time on Earth, a new study shows that religious patients may seek it out at three times the rate of non-religious patients…

The article goes on to attribute this as believers wanting to give God every last opportunity to provide them with a miracle. But this makes no sense to me. Why would an omniscient and omnipotent god be thinking that if she just makes it ’til Tuesday, then I’ll have time on my calendar to cure her. This sounds more like desperation or fear to me. People either unable to cope with the inevitability of death or fearing death itself.

Now one of the traditional roles of religion has been to assuage peoples’ fear of death and/or fear of the unknown. So I’m inclined to wonder if what the study really uncovered was a correlation between a predilection for anxiety regarding the unknown and a religious bent.