Irreligion

Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. It encompasses a wide range of viewpoints drawn from various philosophical and intellectual perspectives, including atheism, agnosticism, religious skepticism, rationalism, secularism, and non-religious spirituality. These perspectives can vary, with individuals who identify as irreligious holding diverse beliefs about religion and its role in their lives.
Relatively little scholarly research was published on irreligion until around the year 2010.

Overview

Over the past several decades, the number of secular people has increased, with a rapid rise in the early 21st century, in many countries. In virtually every high-income country and many poor countries, religion has declined. Highly secular societies tend to be societally healthy and successful. Social scientists have predicted declines in religious beliefs and their replacement with more scientific/naturalistic outlooks. According to Ronald Inglehart, this trend seems likely to continue and a reverse rarely lasts long because the trend is driven by technological innovation. However, other researchers disagree. By 2050, Pew Research Center expects irreligious people to probably decline as a share of the world population, at least for a time, because of faster population growth in highly religious countries and shrinking populations in at least some less religious countries. Many countries may also be gradually becoming more secular, generation by generation. Younger generations tend to be less religious than their elders. They might become more religious as they age, but still be less religious than previous generations if their countries become more affluent and stable. Nonetheless, secularization is compatible with religion since most versions of secularity do not lead to atheism or irreligion. Religious congruence, that is consistency between beliefs and behaviors, in individuals is rare. Religious incongruence is not the same thing as religious insincerity or hypocrisy. The widespread religious congruence fallacy occurs when interpretations or explanations unjustifiably presume religious congruence. This fallacy also infects "New Atheist" critiques of religion.
Estimating the number of irreligious people in the world is difficult. Those who do not affiliate with a religion are diverse. In many countries censuses and demographic surveys do not separate atheists, agnostics and those responding "nothing in particular" as distinct populations, obscuring significant differences that may exist between them. People can feel reasonable anxieties about giving a politically ‘wrong’ answer – in either direction. Measurement of irreligiosity requires a high degree of cultural sensitivity, especially outside the West, where the concepts of "religion" or "the secular" are not always rooted in local culture and may not even be present. The sharp distinction, and often antagonism, between "religious" and "secular" is culturally and historically unique to the West since in most of human history and cultures, there was little differentiation between the natural and supernatural and concepts do not always transfer across cultures. Forms of secularity always reflect the societal, historical, cultural and religious contexts in which they emerge, and distinctions are sharp in religiously dominant contexts. Also, there's considerable prevalence of atheism and agnosticism in ancient Asian texts. Atheistic traditions have played a significant part in those cultures for millennia. "Cultural religion" must be taken into account: non-religious people can be found in religious categories, especially where religion has very deep-seated religious roots in a culture. Many of the religiously unaffiliated have some religious beliefs and participate in religious practices.
In 2016, Zuckerman, Galen and Pasquale estimated there were 400 million nonreligious or nontheistic people.
A 2022 Gallup International Association survey, done in 61 countries, reported that 62% of respondents said they are religious, one in four that they aren't, 10% that they're atheists and the rest are not sure. In 2016, it found similar results, also in 2014. People in the European Union, East Asia and Oceania were the least religious.
In 2010, according to Pew, the religiously unaffiliated numbered more than 1.1 billion, about one-in-six people. 76% of them resided in the 60 countries of Asia-Pacific. China, officially an atheist state and considered to be the world's first or second most populous country, alone held the majority. Shares were relatively similar in three of the six regions: Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America. Men, younger people, and whites, Asians, and people of Jewish heritage are more likely to be secular.

Etymology

Irreligion is either a borrowing from French or from Latin. The term irreligion is a combination of the noun religion and the ir- form of the prefix in-, signifying "not". 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.

Definition

According to the encyclopedia Britannica, the term irreligion is frequently characterized differently depending on context. Sometimes, surveys of religious belief use lack of identification with a religion as a marker of irreligion. This can be misleading: in some cases a person may identify with a religious cultural institution but not hold the doctrines of that institution or take part in its religious practice.
Some scholars define irreligion as the active rejection of religion, as opposed to the mere absence of religion. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society defines it as: "Active rejection of religion in general or any of its more specific organized forms. It is thus distinct from the secular, which simply refers to the absence of religion. In contemporary usage, it is increasingly employed as a synonym for unbelief " Sociologist Colin Campbell also describes it as "deliberate indifference towards religion", in his 1971 Towards a Sociology of Irreligion.
The Oxford English Dictionary has two definitions, one of which is labelled obsolete. It is want of religion; hostility to or disregard of religious principles; irreligious conduct.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as "the quality or state of being irreligious" and "irreligious" as "neglectful of religion: lacking religious emotions, doctrines, or practices", also "indicating lack of religion".
Also for "religion", there is no universally agreed-upon definition, even within the social sciences.

Types

Agnostic atheism is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not believe in the existence of any deity and agnostic because they claim that the existence of a deity is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact.
Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, the divine, and the supernatural are unknown or unknowable.
Alatrism or alatry is the recognition of the existence of one or more gods, but with a deliberate lack of worship of any deity. Typically, it includes the belief that religious rituals have no supernatural significance and that gods ignore all prayers and worship.
Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters.
Antireligion is opposition to or rejection of religion of any kind.
Antitheism is the explicit opposition to theism. The term has had a range of applications. It typically refers to direct opposition to belief in any deity.
Apatheism is the attitude of apathy or indifference toward the existence or non-existence of any deity.
Atheism is the lack of belief that any deities exist; in a narrower sense, positive atheism is specifically the position that there are factually no deities. There are ranges of negative and positive atheism.
"Cultural religion"
Deism is a philosophical position and rationalistic theology that rejects revelation as a source of knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe.
Freethought. It holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism rather than authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma.
Ietsism is an unspecified belief in an undetermined transcendent reality.
Ignosticism, also known as igtheism, is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent, unambiguous definition.
Naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe.
New Atheism is the position of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.
Nones can be used to refer to those who are unaffiliated with any organized religion. This use derives from surveys of religious affiliation, in which "None" is typically the last choice. Since this status can be chosen because of lack of organizational affiliation or lack of personal belief, it is a more specific concept than irreligion. A 2015 Gallup, Inc. poll concluded that in the United States "nones" were growing as a percentage of the population, while Christians were declining and non-Christians also increasing but to a much lesser degree, since the 1950s.
Nontheism
Post-theism is a variant of nontheism that proposes that the division of theism and atheism is obsolete and that the God-idea belongs to a stage of human development now past. Within nontheism, post-theism can be contrasted with antitheism.
Religious skepticism is a type of skepticism about religion.
Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties, such as logic, empathy, reason, and ethical intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions.
Secular humanism is a system of thought that prioritizes human rather than divine matters.
Secular liberalism is a form of liberalism in which secularist principles and values, and sometimes non-religious ethics, are especially emphasized.
Secular paganism is an outlook that upholds the virtues and principles associated with paganism while maintaining a secular worldview.
Secularism. It is also used to describe a political conviction in favor of minimizing religion in the public sphere that may be advocated for regardless of personal religiosity. Sometimes, especially in the United States, it is also a synonym for naturalism or atheism.
"Spiritual but not religious" is 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, but are sometimes classified as a wholly distinct group.
Theological noncognitivism is the argument that religious language—specifically, words such as God—are not cognitively meaningful. It is sometimes considered synonymous with ignosticism.
Transtheism refers to a system of thought or religious philosophy that is neither theistic nor atheistic but beyond them.