Irreligion

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Irreligion by country

Irreligion (adjective form: non-religious or irreligious) is the absence of religion, an indifference towards religion, a rejection of religion, or hostility towards religion.^[1] When characterized as the rejection of religious belief, it includes explicit atheism, religious dissidence, and secular humanism. When characterized as hostility towards religion, it includes anticlericalism, antireligion, and antitheism.

When characterized as indifference to religion, it includes apatheism. When characterized as the absence of religious belief, it may also include deism, implicit atheism, spiritual but not religious, agnosticism, pandeism, ignosticism, nontheism, pantheism, panentheism, religious skepticism, and freethought. Irreligion may include forms of theism, depending on the religious context it is defined against. In 18th-century Europe, the epitome of irreligion was deism.^[2]

A 2012 survey found that 36% of the world population is not religious and that between 2005 and 2012 world religiosity decreased by 9 percentage points.^[3] Being nonreligious is not necessarily equivalent to being an atheist or agnostic. A Pew Research Center global report in 2012 noted that many of the nonreligious actually have some religious beliefs. According to the study, "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."^[4] The majority of the nonreligious (76%) are concentrated in Asia and the Pacific, while only a small portion comes from Europe (12%) or North America (5%).^[4]

Constitutional protections

Most Western 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 authored 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."^[5] 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."^[6]

Demographics

Although 10 countries listed below have non-religious majorities, it does not mean that majority of the populations of these countries don′t belong to any religious group. For example, 67.5% of the Swedish population belongs to Lutheran Christian Church,^[7] while 58.7% of Albanians declare themselves as Muslims. 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 members of the national churches.^[8]

Gallup Religiosity Index 2009 (light color indicates religious, dark nonreligious)^[9]

The tables below order the percentage of a country's population that are nonreligious from highest to lowest.

Country Percentage of population that is non-religious Date and source  Czech Republic 67.8 2011[10]  Sweden 46–85 (average of 65.5) [11]  Vietnam 46.1–81 (average of 63.55) [11][12]  Denmark 43–80 (average of 61.5) [11]  Netherlands 51.3–61 (average of 56.1) [11][13]  Albania 52 [14][15][16]  United Kingdom 39–65 (average of 52) 2011[17]  Japan 84% [11]  Azerbaijan 51 [18]  China 8–93 (average of 50.5) [11][12][19]  Estonia 49 [11]  France 43–54 (average of 48.5) [11]  Russia 48.1 [12]  Belarus 47.8 [12]  South Korea 46.5 [12][20]  Finland 28–60 (average of 44) [11]  Hungary 42.6 [12]  Ukraine 42.4 [12]  Iceland 42 2012[21]  New Zealand 41.9 (89.9% census response rate) [22]  Latvia 40.6 [12]  Belgium 35.4 [12]  Germany 34.6 [23]  Chile 33.8 [12]  United States 33 [24]  Ecuador 30.0 [25]  Luxembourg 29.9 [12]  Slovenia 29.9 [12]  Uruguay 29.4 [12]  Venezuela 27.0 [12]  Canada 23.9 2011[26]  Spain 23.3 [27]  Slovakia 23.1 [12]

Country Percentage of population that is non-religious (2006) Date and source  Australia 22.3 [28]   Switzerland 21.4 2012[29]  Mexico 20.5 [12]  Lithuania 19.4 [12]  Italy 17.8 [12]  Argentina 16.0 [30]  South Africa 15.1 [31]  Croatia 13.2 [12]  Austria 12.2 [12]  Portugal 11.4 [12]  Puerto Rico 11.1 [12]  Bulgaria 11.1 [12]  Philippines 10.9 [12]  Brazil 8.0 [32]  Ireland 7.0 [33]  India 6.6 [12]  Serbia 5.8 [12]  Peru 4.7 [12]  Poland 4.6 [12]  Greece 4.0 [12]  Turkey 2.5 [12]  Romania 2.4 [12]  Tanzania 1.7 [12]  Malta 1.3 [12]  Iran 1.1 [12]  Uganda 1.1 [12]  Nigeria 0.7 [12]  Thailand 0.27 [34]  Bangladesh 0.1 [12]

See also

• Humanism
• Importance of religion by country
• Irreligion by country
• Nontheistic religions
• Pantheism
• Post-theism
• Skepticism
• Spiritual but not religious
• Transtheistic

References

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Irreligion.

• John Allen Paulos (9 June 2009). Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-8090-5918-8. 
• Richard Henry Popkin; Arie Johan Vanderjagt (1993). Scepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-09596-0. 
• Eric Wright (November 2010). Irreligion: Thought, Rationale, History. BiblioBazaar. ISBN 978-1-171-06863-1.