Irreligion

Irreligion (adjective form: non-religious or irreligious) is the absence of religion, an indifference towards religion, a rejection of religion, or hostility towards religion.^[1] When characterized as the rejection of religious belief, it encompasses explicit atheism, religious dissidence, and secular humanism. When characterized as hostility towards religion, it encompasses anticlericalism, antireligion, and antitheism.

When characterized as indifference to religion, it is known as apatheism. When characterized as the absence of religious belief, it may also include deism, implicit atheism, "spiritual but not religious", agnosticism, pandeism, ignosticism, nontheism, pantheism, panentheism, religious skepticism, and freethought, depending upon individual definitions, and the distinction between different senses of the word religion. Irreligion may include some forms of theism, depending on the religious context it is defined against; for example, in 18th-century Europe, the epitome of irreligion was deism.^[2]

Several comprehensive global polls on the subject have been conducted by Gallup International: their 2012 poll found that 23% of the world population is not religious, 13% were "convinced atheists", and between 2005 and 2012 world religiosity decreased by 9 percentage points.^[3] However, their 2015 poll found that only 22% of the world population is not religious and only 11% were "convinced atheists".^[4] According to Pew Research Center projections, the nonreligious, though temporarily increasing, will ultimately decline significantly by 2050 because of lower reproductive rates and ageing.^[5]

Being nonreligious is not necessarily equivalent to being an atheist or agnostic. A Pew Research Center global report in 2012 noted that many of the nonreligious actually have some religious beliefs. According to the study, "belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults."^[6] The majority of the nonreligious (76%) are concentrated in Asia and the Pacific, while only a small portion comes from Europe (12%) or North America (5%).^[6]

Human rights[edit]

In 1993, the UN's human rights committee declared that article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief."^[7] The committee further stated that "the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views." Signatories to the convention are barred from "the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers" to recant their beliefs or convert. ^[8]^[9]

Most Western democracies protect the freedom of religion, and it is largely implied in respective legal systems that those who do not believe or observe any religion are allowed freedom of thought.

A noted exception to ambiguity, explicitly allowing non-religion, is Article 36 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China (as authored in 1982), which states that "No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion."^[10] Article 46 of China’s 1978 Constitution was even more explicit, stating that "Citizens enjoy freedom to believe in religion and freedom not to believe in religion and to propagate atheism."^[11]

Demographics[edit]

Although 10 countries listed below have non-religious majorities, it does not mean that majority of the populations of these countries don′t belong to any religious group. For example, 67.5% of the Swedish population belongs to Lutheran Christian Church,^[12] while 58.7% of Albanians declare themselves as Muslims.^{[citation needed]} Also, though Scandinavian countries have among the highest measures of nonreligiosity and even atheism in Europe, 47% of atheists who live in those countries are still members of the national churches.^[13]

A Pew 2015 global projection study for religion and nonreligion, projects that between 2010 and 2050, there will some initial increases of the unaffiliated followed by a decline by 2050 due to lower global fertility rates among this demographic.^[14] Sociologist Phil Zuckerman's global studies on atheism have indicated that global atheism may be in decline due to irreligious countries having the lowest birth rates in the world and religious countries having higher birth rates in general.^[15]

Gallup Religiosity Index 2009 (light color indicates religious, dark nonreligious)^[16]

The tables below order the percentage of a country's population that are nonreligious from highest to lowest.

Country	Percentage of population that is non-religious (+20%)	Date and source
Estonia	70.4	^[17]
Czech Republic	67.8	^[18]
Vietnam	63	^[17]^[19]
Denmark	61	^[17]
Netherlands	56	^[17]^[20]
Germany	55	^[21]
Sweden	54	^[17]
Albania	52	^[22]^[23]^[24]
Japan	52	^[17]
Azerbaijan	51	^[25]
China	50.5	^[17]^[19]^[26]
Uruguay	47	^[27]
France	44	^[17]
Russia	43.8	^[19]
Belarus	43.5	^[19]
South Korea	43	^[19]^[28]
Finland	42.9	^[17]
Hungary	42.6	^[19]
Ukraine	42.4	^[19]
Iceland	42	^[29]
New Zealand	41.9	^[30]
Latvia	40.6	^[19]
United Kingdom	39	^[31]
Belgium	35.4	^[19]
Luxembourg	29.9	^[19]
Slovenia	29.9	^[19]
Chile	25.0	^[32]
Canada	23.9	^[33]
Spain	23.3	^[34]
Slovakia	23.1	^[19]
United States	22.8	^[35]
Australia	22.3	^[36]
Switzerland	21.4	^[37]

Country	Percentage of population that is non-religious (-20%)	Date and source
Lithuania	19.4	^[19]
Guatemala	18.3	^[38]
Italy	17.8	^[19]
Argentina	16.0	^[39]
Nicaragua	15.7	^[40]
Belize	15.6	^[41]
South Africa	15.1	^[42]
El Salvador	14.6	^[43]
Croatia	13.2	^[19]
Austria	12.2	^[19]
Portugal	11.4	^[19]
Costa Rica	11.3	^[44]
Puerto Rico	11.1	^[19]
Bulgaria	11.1	^[19]
Philippines	10.9	^[19]
Honduras	9.0	^[32]
Brazil	8.0	^[45]
Ecuador	7.9	^[46]
Ireland	7.0	^[47]
Mexico	7.0	^[32]
India	6.6	^[19]
Venezuela	6.0	^[32]
Serbia	5.8	^[19]
Peru	4.7	^[19]
Poland	4.6	^[19]
Greece	4.0	^[19]
Panama	3.0	^[48]
Turkey	2.5	^[19]
Romania	2.4	^[19]
Tanzania	1.7	^[19]
Malta	1.3	^[19]
Iran	1.1	^[19]
Uganda	1.1	^[19]
Nigeria	0.7	^[19]
Thailand	0.27	^[49]
Bangladesh	0.1	^[19]