Bentzen, ‘Origins of Religiousness: Natural Disasters’ (2013)

Nepal has earthquakes; Java has volcanoes; the United Kingdom has dreary weather. Is there a geographic correlation between religiosity and catastrophe?

Jeanet Sinding Bentzen. ‘Origins of Religiousness: The Role of Natural Disasters’. University of Copenhagen Department of Economics Discussion Paper 13-02, 2013. [official site / PDF]

From the Abstract

[…] Natural disasters are a source for adverse life events, and thus one way to interpret my findings is by way of religious coping. The results are robust to various measures of religiousness, and to inclusion of country fixed effects, income, education, demographics, religious denominations, and other climatic and geographic features. The results hold within Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, and across continents. […]

Tachikawa, Essays in Buddhist Theology (2012)

Tachikawa, Musashi. Essays in Buddhist Theology. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, November 2012. ISBN-13: 978-8120835405. INR 500. [official]

A translation of Budda no tetsugaku (1998) [corrected].

Cover note
“Buddhism does not recognize a concept of the existence of God (theos) such as found in Christianity, but here theos is not used to refer only to an absolute deity like the Christian god. By “theology,” the author means the systematic delineation of the confrontation with the condition of the times while carrying on the engagement between the divine and oneself.
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