Irreligion in the world and its various types!

Religion in the world has come with more problems than benefits. People have twisted and broken it to their advantage and interests and the net result is that none of those who follow it are happy. Religion has led to innumerable miseries in the world and hence many people are seeking irreligion to get relief from it. But do you know that there are several types of irreligion in the world? Let us have a quick glance at these subtypes of irreligion!

IRRELIGION AND WHAT IT MEANS?

The term Irreligion signifies an indifference, absence or rejection of religion. There might even be an element of hostility towards religion especially when the individual has suffered at the hands of religion. It means not having any religious beliefs. Pew Research Center did research in 230 countries of the world and infer that 16% of the world population is irreligious. The proportion varies according to the countries with some being highly irreligious and some deeply and fanatically religious.

Irreligion [Source: Facebook]

But studies have revealed that those countries that are irreligious prosper and flourish more. They are richer than the countries that are religious.

Social Sciences define irreligion as adhering to a pure naturalist world view and viewpoint and having no influence on one’s thinking of supernatural faith. Such individuals have no religious identification and some may have metaphysical beliefs such as positive atheists.

But irreligion is not one big group but there are subsets in it. These include Agnostic Atheism, Agnosticism, Anti-religion, Antitheism, Apatheism, Atheism, Deism, Free thinking or Freethought, Naturalism, Positive Atheism, Rationalism, Secular Humanism, Secularism, Skepticism, Spiritual but not religious, and Theological noncognitivism. Let us go through each of them and understand them better!

Agnostic Atheism: These are people who do not believe in any diety and also feel that the presence of a deity is unknown and can also not be known.

 Agnosticism: These individuals feel that the existence of God, divine power, or supernatural power is unknown and unknowable.

 Anti-religion: These individuals oppose or reject the religion of any kind.

Irreligion is on the rise in NZ and in the world [Source: Wikizero]

Antitheism: These people oppose that belief in the existence of Gods.

 Apatheism: These people are happy in a sense of apathy and indifference to the existence or the non-existence of Gods.

 Atheism: lack of belief in the existence of deities.

Deism: These people do not believe that revelation is the source of religious knowledge. They assert that reason and observation of the natural world prove that there is a supreme being or creator of the universe.

Free thinking or Free-thought: In this, people advocate that truth should be based on logic, reason, and empiricism and not on authority, revelation, tradition, or any other dogma.

Naturalism: These people believe that only natural and not supernatural or spiritual forces and laws operate in the universe and our system.

Positive atheism: The position that there are no deities.

Rationalism: These people believe that reason is the chief source and test for knowledge.

Secular Humanism: In this, human matters are prioritized and not divine matters. It is a humanistic philosophy. It is a non-theistic religion as against traditional religion.

Secularism: This is a political conviction that aims to minimize the use of religion in the public sphere.

Skepticism: In this, the belief is that certain knowledge is impossible.

Spiritual but not religious: These are SBNR and reject traditional and organized religion as the sole way to further spiritual growth.

Theological noncognitivism: It states that religious language and use of words such as God is cognitively not meaningful. It could be synonymous with ignosticism.

IRRELIGION AND HUMAN RIGHTS AND COUNTRIES

The UN Convention protects the rights of individuals to believe or not to believe in any religion. The country with the maximum number of irreligious people in the Czech Republic (75%) and the least are in Thailand, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, each less than 1%.

Irreligion and politics [Source: Pinterest]