What is nonbelief? An empirical research on the concept of nonbelief

• Published in: Türkiye din eğitimi araştırmaları (Online) 2017, Vol.2017 (4), p.23-40
• Main Authors: Sevinç, Kenan, Metinyurt, Tuğba, COLEMAN, Thomas J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agnosticism; Atheism; Belief & doubt; Din Bilimleri; Social conditions & trends; Sociology; Spirituality
• ISSN: 2149-9845; 2636-7807

Nonbelief is a topic recently began to attract interest in the field of psychology of religion. The number of studies on this issue have started to rise. However, when we look at researches on nonbelief, it seems to have ambiguity on what is nonbelief, and who is considered as nonbelievers. Are nonbelievers nonreligious or nonspiritual? Does being an atheist mean to be a nonbeliever? In this study, we aim to empirically examine the concept of nonbelief. The current study was carried out with 2548 participants who -identify themselves with at least one type of nonbelief in the United States in 2014. The findings indicate that the majority of nonbelievers are estimated to say "I do not believe in God", namely 85.6% of the nonbelievers do not believe in God and 12.3% think the existence of God cannot be known; 88.07% identified themselves as atheists; 60.8% of nonbelievers who say “I don’t know whether there is a God and I don’t believe there is any way to find out” self-labeled themselves as agnostic, while 60.2% of them self-labeled themselves as atheist at the same time; 87.8% of them are nonreligious-nonspiritual; 2.07% of them are spiritual in terms of vertical transcendence. The current study concludes that there are three main indicators to consider in order to identify an individual as a nonbeliever: absence of belief in God, being nonreligious-nonspiritual in the sense of vertical transcendence, and self-declaration as nonbeliever, atheist, and agnostic or else.