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Nonreligion Terminology
...atheists, agnostics, skeptics,
freethinkers, scientific, rationalists, irreligious, nonreligious,
nonbelievers, secularists, secular humanists, humanists, brights, apostates,
unchurched, non-churched, nontheists, naturalists, disbelievers, unbelievers,
empiricists, monists, objectivists, materialists, infidels, heathens,
this-worlders, non-transcendentalists, nontheists, non-spiritual,
non-supernatural, anti-religious, religious defectors, religious
drop-outs, religious nones, religious nots, religious non-affiliatation,
religious doubt, religious disaffiliation, religious switching, deconversion,
unconversion...
These are some of the terms
people use when talking about nonreligious individuals.
When it comes to research on
the nonreligion, social scientists have not yet agreed on what terms and
definitions are best. The Center
seeks to be clear and accurate in its use of terminology. To accomplish this,
the Center will draw upon the most recent guidelines from scholars of
nonreligion
Lee (2012) defines non-religion
as "anything which is primarily defined by a relationship of difference to
religion" (p. 131).
Cragun et al. (2012) define nonreligiousness
and nonspirituality as "the absence of personal religiousness and
spirituality," respectively.
Bullivant (in press) defines atheism as "an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods" and atheist as "one who is without a belief in the existence of a God or
gods."
In the past, the Center has
used terminology such as secularism and secularity. However, recent
scholarship has convincingly argued that moving away from this terminology is
best.
References
Bullivant, S. (in press). Defining 'atheism'. In S.
Bullivant (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of atheism.
Cragun, R. T., & Hammer, J. H., Harder, B. M.,
Fernandez, C., & Nielsen, M. (2012). The Nonreligious-Nonspiritual scale:
Measuring everyone from atheists to Zionists. Unpublished manuscript.
Lee (2012). Research note: Talking about a revolution:
Terminology for a new field of non-religion studies. Journal of Contemporary
Religion, 27(1), 129-139.
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