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According to reports from the WIN/Gallup International's (WIN/GIA) four global polls: in 2005, 77% were a religious person and 4% were "convinced atheists"; in 2012, 23% were not a religious person and 13% were "convinced atheists"; [2] in 2015, 22% were not a religious person and 11% were "convinced atheists"; [3] and in 2017, 25% were not a ...
High rates of atheism have been found among self-identified Christians in the United States. Out of all Americans who do not believe in God, 5% identified as Catholic while 9% identified as Protestant and other Christian according to the 2007 Pew Religious Landscape survey. [5]
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.
Respondents to religious-belief polls may define "atheism" differently or draw different distinctions between atheism, non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious and spiritual beliefs. [180] A 2010 survey published in Encyclopædia Britannica found that the non-religious made up about 9.6% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.0%.
Words like God and atheism seldom translate well across cultures or languages, and if they are there, they have variant meanings which make cross-cultural comparisons tenuous. [1] [2] So it can be hard to draw boundaries between atheism, non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious and spiritual beliefs.
Historically, the words religious and spiritual have been used synonymously to describe all the various aspects of the concept of religion. [1] However, religion is a highly contested term with scholars such as Russell McCutcheon arguing that the term "religion" is used as a way to name a "seemingly distinct domain of diverse items of human activity and production". [6]
For example, Paul James and Peter Mandaville distinguish between religion and spirituality, but provide a definition of the term that avoids the usual reduction to "religions of the book": Religion can be defined as a relatively-bounded system of beliefs, symbols and practices that addresses the nature of existence, and in which communion with ...
Hitchens addresses the question of whether religious people behave more virtuously than non-religious people (atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers). He uses the battle against slavery in the United States, and Abraham Lincoln, to support his claim that non-religious people battle for moral causes with as much vigor and effect as religious ...