This is interesting and counterintuitive (for me, anyway): Pious 'fight death the hardest'
People with strong religious beliefs appear to want doctors to do everything they can to keep them alive as death approaches, a US study suggests.
Researchers followed 345 patients with terminal cancer up until their deaths.
Those who regularly prayed were more than three times more likely to receive intensive life-prolonging care than those who relied least on religion.
The team's report was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
It suggests that such care, including resuscitation, may make death more uncomfortable.
Just over 30% of those asked agreed with the statement that religion was "the most important thing that keeps you going".
The researchers from the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute found these people were the least likely to have filled in a "do not resuscitate" order.
...
The researchers in this latest study stressed that religion had been widely associated with an improved ability to cope with the stress of illness.
But "because aggressive end-of-life cancer care has been associated with a poor quality of death and caregiver bereavement adjustment, intensive end-of-life care might represent a negative outcome for religious copers", defined as those who regularly used prayer or meditation for support.
Maybe there's some positive correlation between the degree of religiousness and fear of death?