The Types of Religiosity in Confrontation with Coronavirus: An Introduction to the Sociology of Evil

The present paper is a report of an experimental study that examines the attitude towards the Corona pandemic and observes religious attitudes from the perspective of the sociology of evil and the sociology of religion. An online survey was conducted to interview the sample consisted of 273 Iranians. The aims of this descriptive study are: 1) Measuring attitude towards the dichotomy of divine/natural essence of Coronavirus, 2) Measuring attitude towards the dichotomy of good/evil essence of Coronavirus, and 3) Examining the correlation of attitudes in both cases with the components of faith in Allah. The first finding is that a new multiplex dichotomy of divine/natural and good/evil is formed based on the results. The second and most important finding is that the study of the correlations between the components of faith in God, on the one hand, with views toward the dichotomies of divine/natural and good/evil, on the other hand, illustrates the existence of two various types of religiosity in confrontation with Coronavirus: thoughtful religiosity and imaginative religiosity. Thoughtful religiosity is shaped around the natural-evil pole of the dichotomy, and imaginative religiosity around its divine-good pole.