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According to research in 2007, only 27% of Catholics in the Netherlands considered themselves theist; 55% were ietsist or agnostic deist and 17% were agnostic or atheist. Many Dutch people still affiliate with the term Catholic and use it within certain traditions as a basis of their cultural identity, rather than as a religious identity.
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]
Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) [1] was considered an insightful and erudite theologian by his Protestant contemporaries. [2] [3] [4] He wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies, and he wrote religious tracts that dealt with the literal interpretation of the Bible. [5] He kept his heretical beliefs private.
The vast majority of the (self-identifying) Catholic population in the Netherlands is now largely irreligious in practice. Research among Catholics in the Netherlands in 2007 shows that even among religious Dutch Catholics only 27% can be regarded as theist, 55% as ietsist, 17% as agnostic and 1% as atheist. [35]
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.
C. S. Lewis suggests that all religions by definition involve faith, or a belief in concepts that cannot be proven or disproven by the sciences. Not all religious people subscribe to the idea that religion and science are mutually exclusive (non-overlapping magisteria) as do some atheists including Stephen Jay Gould. [138]
Lutheran and social constructionist sociologist Peter L. Berger states that Schubert M. Ogden's The Reality of God (1966), Paul van Buren's The Secular Meaning of the Gospel and Anglican bishop John A. T. Robinson's Honest to God "marked the rather loud inauguration of what came to be known as secular theology on the Anglo-American scene".
Religious views on truth vary both between and within religions. The most universal concept of religion that holds true in every case is the inseparable nature of truth and religious belief. Each religion sees itself as the only path to truth. [citation needed] Religious truth, therefore, is never relative, always absolute.