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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.
Writers disagree on how best to define and classify atheism, [8] contesting what supernatural entities are considered gods, whether atheism is a philosophical position or merely the absence of one, and whether it requires a conscious, explicit rejection; however, the norm is to define atheism in terms of an explicit stance against theism.
Atheists are between 4% and 7% of American adults. [2]: 18 [1] Agnostics make up between 4 and 5% of the adult population. [2]: 18 [1] [6] [7] [8] A growing proportion of people appear to be reporting no religious affiliation on surveys. [9] The percentage of Americans without religious affiliation, often labeled as "Nones", is between 22 and 31%.
Although Jesus is still a central feature of Christian atheism, Hamilton said that to the Christian atheist, Jesus as a historical or supernatural figure is not the foundation of faith; instead, Jesus is a "place to be, a standpoint". [5]
The Soviet Union adopted the political ideology of Marxism–Leninism and by extension the policy of state atheism, which opposed the growth of religions. [7] It directed varying degrees of antireligious efforts at varying faiths, depending on what threat they posed to the Soviet state, and their willingness to subordinate themselves to political authority.
In Islam, atheists are categorized as kafir , a term that is also used to describe polytheists , and that translates roughly as "denier" or "concealer". Kafir carries connotations of blasphemy and disconnection from the Islamic community. In Arabic, "atheism" is generally translated ilhad , although this also means "heresy".
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. [1] [2] [3] It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer to personal limitations rather than a worldview.
Antitheism has been adopted as a label by those who regard theism as dangerous, destructive, or encouraging of harmful behavior. Christopher Hitchens (2001) [6] wrote: . I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful."