Religion Definition

Religious beliefs and behaviours, and their various forms of expression (Moro & Myers, 2010), have had a significant and pervasive influence on human behaviour and culture throughout history (Allport, 1967; Harper, 2007; Saroglou, 2012). Roughly 4.6 billion people, 68% of the world’s population, consider religion to play a significant role in their everyday lives (Diener, Tay & Myers, 2011; Saroglou, 2012). A basic finding in research, is that religion is perceived as a systems of beliefs, rituals, feelings and relationships that fulfils one of the utmost human needs to create and maintain meaning - aligning one’s beliefs, goals and perceptions of the world (Inzlicht, Tullett & Good, 2011). Many researchers have criticised Psychology’s lack

The security axioms refers to a shift away from the absolute values and norms of a culture towards those that are progressively more balanced, cultural values within a society are distinctly path dependent however, the cultural axiom acknowledges that the religious heritage of a society leaves it’s hallmark on enduring values of that society (Inglehart & Norris,

A correlation investigating selected measures of societal security and religious behaviour, for example the Human Development Index, was negatively correlated with both religious participation and prayer frequency, , supporting modernization theory: as societal condition improve for individuals, their religiosity declines (Norris & Inglehart, 2004; Zuckerman, 2009). This finding has been replicated in empirical literature (Paul, 2005/2009; Rees, 2009). Using a disbelief measure and controlled for effects of living in communist and Islamic states, Barber (2011) found that religious disbelief was correlated with independent (economic development measured and economic security) and control variables that are all predictors of religious disbelief in regression analysis. These variables were found to explained 75% of the variance accounted for in religious disbelief, further supporting modernization