Most explanations of the origin of atheism are simplistic – as is the notion that people turn to religion for comfort.
Last week, in a lecture presented by the Non-religion and Secularity Research Network, Jon Lanman set out to explore the evolutionary origins of atheism.
Lanman, who is originally from St Louis, Missouri, recently completed his DPhil in anthropology at Oxford. His thesis explores atheism in the west including both non-theism (a general lack of belief in the existence of supernatural agents) and what he calls “strong atheism”, defined as “the moral disapproval of and active stance against such beliefs”.
“Is a science of atheism possible?” he asked, noting that there is a “great diversity of atheisms” and refusing to get tangled up in defining the term too closely. For him, the important thing is to ensure that the phenomenon being studied is not viewed as a constellation, which is only a pattern a human perceives while looking at a group of stars from a particular location and angle.
If most explanations of the origins of religion are simplistic – fear of death, an attempt to explain the universe – the same is true of explanations of the origins of atheism. Explanations such as intelligence, rationality, education or rebellion are too pat.
For one thing, there are significant national differences. Non-theists make up 43-80% of the Scandinavian population and 13-44% of the UK, but only 3-9% of the US. Ethnographic data disputes the notion that people turn to religion for comfort in a frightening world.
Read more of “The flowering of strong athiesm“.
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