Rethinking histories of atheism, unbelief, and nonreligion: An interdisciplinary perspective

Abstract

With the number of atheists and nonreligious people at an all-time global high, scholars have become increasingly interested in the study of atheism, including its history. There is, however, disagreement about how best to conceptualise what is being studied. This article ventures to rethink the terminology we use to frame the field, and in particular the extent to which it can be applied beyond Western modernity. While ‘atheism’ or ‘unbelief’ are perhaps the most common ways to talk about this field, both fall short in various ways. ‘Atheism’ fails to grasp the diversity of religious unbelief by centring focus on the question of God’s existence. Even a term like ‘unbelief’, while getting around the narrowness of the term ‘atheism’, creates problems of its own, namely its emphasis on ‘belief’ as the defining aspect of religious experience. An alternative term – ‘nonreligion’ – might help us around this issue, but, while the term is broader than ‘atheism’ or ‘unbelief’, it too runs into difficulties, particularly the fact that it is parasitic upon the term ‘religion’, a category whose universal applicability has been called into question.

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