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.^[1]

Relatively little scholarly research was published on non-belief until 15 years ago.^[2]

Over the past several decades, the number of secular persons has increased, with a rapid rise, early 21st century, in many countries.^{[3][4]: 4 [1][5]: 112 [6]} In virtually every high-income country and many poor countries, religion has declined.^[5]: 112 Highly secular societies tend to be societally healthy and successful.^[7] Social scientists have predicted declines in religious beliefs and their replacement with more scientific/naturalistic outlooks (secularization hypothesis).^[8] According to Ronald Inglehart, this trend seems likely to continue and a reverse rarely lasts long because the trend is driven by technological innovation.^[9] However, other researchers disagree (contra-secularization hypothesis).^[8] By 2050, Pew Research Center (Pew) expects irreligious people to probably decline as a share of the world population (16.4% to 13.2%), at least for a time, because of faster population growth in highly religious countries and shrinking populations in at least some less religious countries.^[1][10] It's also possible that many countries are gradually becoming more secular, generation by generation.^[10] Younger generations tend to be less religious than their elders.^{[10][11][12]: 5} They might become more religious as they age, but still be less religious than previous generations if their countries become more affluent and stable.^[12]: 13 Religious congruence refers to consistency among an individual's religious beliefs and attitudes, consistency between religious ideas and behavior, and religious ideas.^{[13][14][15]: 2} Research has shown that it is rare.^{[13][14][15]: 2} Religious incongruence is not the same thing as religious insincerity or hypocrisy.^[15]: 5 The widespread religious congruence fallacy occurs when interpretations or explanations unjustifiably presume religious congruence.^{[13][14][15]: 19} This fallacy also infects "new atheist" critiques of religion.^[15]: 21

Estimating the number of irreligious people in the world is difficult.^[16][1] 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.^[17]: 60 People can feel reasonable anxieties about giving a politically ‘wrong’ answer – in either direction.^[16] 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 or even exist.^[4]: 31-34 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.^[4]: 31 Forms of secularity always reflect the societal, historical, cultural and religious contexts in which they emerge.^[4]: 31 The distinction between secular and religious is most sharply drawn usually in dominantly religious contexts.^[4]: 31 Also, there's considerable prevalence of atheism and agnosticism in ancient Asian texts.^[18] Atheistic traditions have played a significant part in those cultures for millennia.^[18] "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.^[17]: 59 Many of the religiously unaffiliated have some religious beliefs.^{[19][20]: 24} Also, some of them engage in certain kinds of religious practices.^{[19][20]: 24} In 2016, Zuckerman, Galen and Pasquale estimated there were 400 million nonreligious or nontheistic people.^[21] A 2022 Gallup International Association (GIA) 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.^[22] In 2016, it found similar results (62%, 25%, 9% and 5%), also in 2014.^{[22][23]: 1 : 3} People in the European Union, East Asia and Oceania were the least religious.^[22] In 2010, according to Pew, the religiously unaffiliated numbered more than 1.1 billion, about one-in-six people (16.3% of an estimated 6.9 billion).^{[24][19][20]: 24 : 25} 76% of them resided in the 60 countries of Asia-Pacific.^{[19][20]: 25 : 46 : 66} China, an atheist state and a Leninist religious state and the world's most populous country, alone held the majority (62.2% or about 700 million).^{[25][26]: 1 [27][1][19][20]: 25 : 46 : 66} Several smaller countries eclipse China's percent of residents who are irreligious.^[27] Shares were relatively similar in three of the six regions: Asia-Pacific (21.2% of more than 4 billion), Europe (18.2% of more than 742 thousands) and North America (17.1% of more than 344 thousands).^{[19][20]: 25} Men, younger people, and whites, Asians, and people of Jewish heritage are more likely to be secular.^[7]