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Respondents to religious-belief polls may define "atheism" differently or draw different distinctions between atheism, non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious and spiritual beliefs. [180] A 2010 survey published in Encyclopædia Britannica found that the non-religious made up about 9.6% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.0%.
People with what would be considered religious or spiritual belief in a supernatural controlling power are defined by some as adherents to a religion; the argument that atheism is a religion has been described as a contradiction in terms. [1]
In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. [2] [3] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. [3] [4] Atheism is contrasted with theism, [5] [6] which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists. [6] [7]
Atheist as a label of practical godlessness was used at least as early as 1577. [14] The term atheism was derived from the French athéisme, [15] and appears in English about 1587. [16] An earlier work, from about 1534, used the term atheonism. [17] [18] Related words emerged later: deist in 1621, [19] theist in 1662, [20] deism in 1675, [21 ...
Practical atheism does not see the god questions as irrelevant, in contrast to apatheism. [9] [10] Thus, "practical atheism is disregard for the answers to [God questions], not a disregard for [God questions] per se. Unlike atheism proper, the practical atheist acts as if God does not exist and has no authority over his life despite his belief ...
The terms atheist (lack of belief in gods) and agnostic (belief in the unknowability of the existence of gods), though specifically contrary to theistic (e.g., Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) religious teachings, do not by definition mean the opposite of religious. The true opposite of religious is the word irreligious.
Implicit atheism and explicit atheism are types of atheism. [1] In George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God, "implicit atheism" is defined as "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it", while "explicit atheism" is "the absence of theistic belief due to a conscious rejection of it". [1]
A man promoting Christian atheism at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London, in 2005. One of his placards reads "To follow Jesus, reject God." There are different schools of thought among Christian atheists. Thomas Ogletree, Frederick Marquand Professor of Ethics and Religious Studies at Yale Divinity School, lists these four common beliefs: [1] [2]