Ep. 59 Professor Daniel Liechty, Death and a Psychosocial Theory of Religion.

Professor Liechty teaches in the Department of Social Work at Illinois State University.  This year he was named as a College of Arts and Science Distinguished Lecturer for the 2018-19 Academic Year which is the highest honor awarded by the College based on faculty scholarship.  In this podcast, we discuss the following subjects:  the historical and contemporary relationship between social work and religion; the human experience predicated on the ability to refuse objective reality and prefer fictional reality; Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death;" Fear of Death; Fear of Life; the role of Culture in allaying anxiety; the existence of the Cultural "other;" Freud, Marx, Tillich, Sufism, drumming, chanting, dancing, trance, and psychedelics.