Irreligion

The term irreligion is a combination of the noun religion and the ir- form of the prefix in-, signifying "not" (similar to irrelevant). It was first attested in French as irréligion in 1527, then in English as irreligion in 1598. It was borrowed into Dutch as irreligie in the 17th century, though it is not certain from which language.[4]

• Agnostic atheism is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not hold a belief in the existence of any deity and agnostic because they claim that the existence of a deity is either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact.[5]
• Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.[6]
• Antireligion is opposition or rejection of religion of any kind.[7]
• Apatheism is the attitude of apathy or indifference towards the existence or non-existence of god(s).[7]
• Atheism is the lack of belief that any deities exist or, in a narrower sense, positive atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. There are ranges from Negative and positive atheism.[8]
• Deism is the philosophical position that rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a Supreme Being or creator of the universe.[9]
• Freethought holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, revelation, or other dogma.[7]
• Naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the universe.[10]
• Secular humanism is a system of thought that prioritizes human rather than divine matters.[11] It is also viewed as a humanistic philosophy viewed as a nontheistic religion antagonistic to traditional religion.[12]
• Secularism is overwhelmingly used to describe a political conviction in favour of minimizing religion in the public sphere, that may be advocated regardless of personal religiosity. Yet it is sometimes, especially in the United States, also a synonym for naturalism or atheism.[13]
• "Spiritual but not religious", a designation, coined by Robert C. Fuller, for people who reject traditional or organized religion but have strong metaphysical beliefs. The SBNR may be included under the definition of nonreligion,[14] but are sometimes classified as a wholly distinct group.[15]
• Theological noncognitivism is the argument that religious language – specifically, words such as God – are not cognitively meaningful. It is sometimes considered as synonymous with ignosticism.

In 1993, the UN's human rights committee declared that article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief."[16] The committee further stated that "the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views." Signatories to the convention are barred from "the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers" to recant their beliefs or convert.[17][18]

Most democracies protect the freedom of religion, and it is largely implied in respective legal systems that those who do not believe or observe any religion are allowed freedom of thought.

A noted exception to ambiguity, explicitly allowing non-religion, is Article 36 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China (as adopted in 1982), which states that "No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion."[19] Article 46 of China's 1978 Constitution was even more explicit, stating that "Citizens enjoy freedom to believe in religion and freedom not to believe in religion and to propagate atheism."[20]

Nonreligious population by country, 2010.[21]

Although 11 countries listed below have nonreligious majorities, it does not necessary correlate with non-identification. For example, 58% of the Swedish population identify with the Lutheran Church,[22] while 59% of Albanians declare themselves as religious. Also, though Scandinavian countries have among the highest measures of nonreligiosity and even atheism in Europe, 47% of atheists who live in those countries are still formally members of the national churches.[23]

Determining objective irreligion, as part of societal or individual levels of secularity and religiosity, requires cultural sensitivity from researchers. This is especially so outside the West, where the Western Christian concepts of "religious" and "secular" are not rooted in local civilization. Many East Asians identify as "without religion" (wú zōngjiào in Chinese, mu shūkyō in Japanese, mu jong-gyo in Korean), but "religion" in that context refers only to Buddhism or Christianity. Most of the people "without religion" practice Shinto and other folk religions. In the Muslim world, those who claim to be "not religious" mostly imply not strictly observing Islam, and in Israel, being "secular" means not strictly observing Orthodox Judaism. Vice versa, many American Jews share the worldviews of nonreligious people though affiliated with a Jewish denomination, and in Russia, growing identification with Eastern Orthodoxy is mainly motivated by cultural and nationalist considerations, without much concrete belief.[24]

A Pew 2015 global projection study for religion and nonreligion, projects that between 2010 and 2050, there will be some initial increases of the unaffiliated followed by a decline by 2050 due to lower global fertility rates among this demographic.[25] Sociologist Phil Zuckerman's global studies on atheism have indicated that global atheism may be in decline due to irreligious countries having the lowest birth rates in the world and religious countries having higher birth rates in general.[26] Since religion and fertility are positively related and vice versa, non-religious identity is expected to decline as a proportion of the global population throughout the 21st century.[27] By 2060, according to projections, the number of unaffiliated will increase by over 35 million, but the percentage will decrease to 13% because the total population will grow faster.[28][29]

According to Pew Research Center's 2012 global study of 230 countries and territories, 16% of the world's population is not affiliated with a religion, while 84% are affiliated.[2] A 2012 Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association report on a poll from 57 countries reported that 59% of the world's population identified as religious person, 23% as not religious person, 13% as "convinced atheists", and also a 9% decrease in identification as "religious" when compared to the 2005 average from 39 countries.[30] Their follow-up report, based on a poll in 2015, found that 63% of the globe identified as religious person, 22% as not religious person, and 11% as "convinced atheists".[31] Their 2017 report found that 62% of the globe identified as religious person, 25% as not religious person, and 9% as "convinced atheists".[32] However, researchers have advised caution with the WIN/Gallup International figures since other surveys which use the same wording, have conducted many waves for decades, and have a bigger sample size, such as World Values Survey; have consistently reached lower figures for the number of atheists worldwide.[33]

Being nonreligious is not necessarily equivalent to being an atheist or agnostic. Pew Research Center's global study from 2012 noted that many of the nonreligious actually have some religious beliefs. For example, they observed that "belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults."[34] Out of the global nonreligious population, 76% reside in Asia and the Pacific, while the remainder reside in Europe (12%), North America (5%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (2%) and the Middle East and North Africa (less than 1%).[34]

The term "nones" is sometimes used in the U.S. to refer to those who are unaffiliated with any organized religion. This use derives from surveys of religious affiliation, in which "None" (or "None of the above") is typically the last choice. Since this status refers to lack of organizational affiliation rather than lack of personal belief, it is a more specific concept than irreligion. A 2015 Gallup poll concluded that in the U.S. "nones" were the only "religious" group that was growing as a percentage of the population.[35]

Country	Percentage of population who are nonreligious	Date and source
Czech Republic	75	[36]
Estonia	70	[37]
Netherlands	68	[38]
Japan	64	[37]
Vietnam	63	[37][39]
Denmark	61	[37]
South Korea	56	[39][40]
Sweden	54	[37]
United Kingdom	53	[41]
Albania	52	[42][43][44]
Azerbaijan	51	[45]
China	51	[37][39][46]
New Zealand	48	[47]
Russia	48	[39]
Belarus	48	[39]
Uruguay	47	[48]
France	44	[37]
Cuba	44	[49]
Finland	43	[37]
Hungary	43	[39]
Iceland	42	[50]
Latvia	41	[39]
Chile	38	[51]
Belgium	35	[39]
Australia	30	[52]
Bulgaria	30	[39]
Germany	21–34	[53][54][55][56][57]
Luxembourg	30	[39]
Slovenia	30	[39]
Spain	29	[58]
Switzerland	26	[59]
Canada	24	[60]
Slovakia	23	[39]
United States	26	[61]
Argentina	21	[62]
Botswana	21	[63]
Jamaica	21	[64]
Lithuania	19	[39]
El Salvador	19	[65]
Singapore	17–19	[66]
Italy	18	[39]
Ukraine	16	[67]
Nicaragua	16	[68]
Belize	16	[69]
South Africa	15	[70]
Croatia	13	[39]
Guatemala	13	[71]
Austria	12	[39]
Portugal	11	[39]
Costa Rica	11	[72]
Philippines	11	[39]
Colombia	11	[73]
Suriname	10	[74]
Turkey	9	[75]
Honduras	9	[73]
Brazil	8	[76]
Ecuador	8	[77]
Peru	8	[78]
India	7	[39]
Ireland	7	[79]
Mexico	28	[80]
Venezuela	6	[73]
Serbia	6	[39]
Poland	5	[39]
Bolivia	5	[81]
Greece	4	[39]
Montenegro	3	[82]
Panama	3	[83]
Romania	2	[39]
Tanzania	2	[39]
Paraguay	2	[84]
Malta	1	[39]
Iran	1	[39]
Uganda	1	[39]
Nigeria	1	[39]
Thailand	<1	[85]
Cambodia	<1	[64]
Bangladesh	<1	[39]

According to political/social scientist Ronald F. Inglehart, "influential thinkers from Karl Marx to Max Weber to Émile Durkheim predicted that the spread of scientific knowledge would dispel religion throughout the world", but religion continued to prosper in most places during the 19th and 20th centuries.[86] Inglehart and Pippa Norris argue faith is "more emotional than cognitive", and advance an alternative thesis ("existential security"). They postulate that rather than knowledge or ignorance of scientific learning determining religiosity, it is how weak/vulnerable a society is that does this – religious values being more important the more poor and chaotic a society is, and less so as they become more rich and secure. As need for the support of religion diminishes, there is less willingness to "accept its constraints, including keeping women in the kitchen and gay people in the closet".[87]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Irreligion.

• The Understanding Unbelief program in the University of Kent.
• "Will religion ever disappear?", from BBC Future, by Rachel Nuwer, in December 2014