{"id":10662,"date":"2019-05-28T14:58:03","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T13:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=10662"},"modified":"2019-05-28T14:58:03","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T13:58:03","slug":"atheism-conference-understanding-unbelief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2019\/05\/28\/atheism-conference-understanding-unbelief\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vatican and Kent host major atheism conference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The global <em>Understanding Unbelief<\/em> programme to advance the scientific understanding of atheism and nonreligion presents results from its research at the Vatican in Rome at a conference running 28 \u201330 May.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The multidisciplinary research programme led by the University of Kent maps the nature and diversity of \u2018unbelief\u2019 across six countries including Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, UK and the USA.<\/p>\n<p>The research is supported by a \u00a32.3 million grant from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.templeton.org\/\">John Templeton Foundation<\/a>, and is led by the University of Kent in collaboration with St Mary\u2019s University Twickenham, Coventry University and Queen\u2019s University Belfast.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers asked about attitudes to issues like supernatural phenomena, such as life after death and astrology, whether the \u2018universe is ultimately meaningless\u2019 and what values matter most to them. They used internationally recognised terms to identify unbelievers &#8211; a<em>theists <\/em>(people who \u2018don\u2019t believe in God\u2019) and <em>agnostics <\/em>(people who \u2018don\u2019t know whether there is a God or not, and don\u2019t believe there is a way to find out\u2019).<\/p>\n<p>Key findings from the research include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Unbelievers exhibit significant diversity both within, and between, different countries<\/li>\n<li>In all six countries, majorities of unbelievers identify as having \u2018no religion\u2019<\/li>\n<li>Relatively few select \u2018atheist\u2019 or \u2018agnostic\u2019 as their preferred (non)religious or secular identity<\/li>\n<li>Popular assumptions about \u2018convinced, dogmatic atheists\u2019 do not stand up to scrutiny<\/li>\n<li>Unbelief in God doesn\u2019t necessarily entail unbelief in other supernatural phenomena and the majority of unbelievers in all countries surveyed expressed belief in one or more supernatural phenomena<\/li>\n<li>A common supposition \u2013 that of the purposeless unbeliever, lacking anything to ascribe ultimate meaning to the universe \u2013 does not bear scrutiny<\/li>\n<li>Most unbelievers endorse objective moral values, human dignity and attendant rights, and the \u2018deep value\u2019 of nature, at similar rates to the general populations in their countries<\/li>\n<li>Unbelievers and general populations show high agreement concerning the values most important for \u2018finding meaning in the world and your own life\u2019. \u2018Family\u2019 and \u2018freedom\u2019 ranked highly for all.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Co-hosting the event are the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cultura.va\/content\/cultura\/en.html\">Pontifical Council for Culture<\/a> \u2013 the Vatican department responsible for dialoguing with non-believers \u2013 and the <a href=\"https:\/\/nsrn.net\/\">Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network<\/a> (www.nsrn.net), co-founded in 2008 by University of Kent sociologist Dr Lois Lee.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Lee, who is Senior Research Fellow in Kent\u2019s Department Religious Studies, is Principal Investigator for Understanding Unbelief. The project is co-led by psychologist Dr Miguel Farias (Coventry University), anthropologist Dr Jonathan Lanman (Queen\u2019s University Belfast), and sociologist Professor Stephen Bullivant (St Mary\u2019s University).<\/p>\n<p>Speaking about the research project, Dr Lee said: \u2018These findings show once and for all that the public image of the atheist is a simplification at best, and a gross caricature at worst. Instead of relying on assumptions about what it means to be an atheist, we can now work with a real understanding of the many different worldviews that the atheist population includes. The implications for public and social policy are substantial \u2014 and this study also stands to impact on more everyday interactions in religiously diverse societies.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Dr Lanman said: \u2018Our data directly counter common stereotypes about unbelievers.\u00a0 A common view of unbelievers is that they lack a sense of objective morality and purpose but possess an arrogant confidence and a very different set of values from the rest of the population. Our representative data across six diverse countries show that none of this is true.\u00a0In a time when our societies seem to be growing more and more polarized, it has been both interesting and encouraging to see that one of the supposed big divides in human life (believers vs. unbelievers) may not be so big after all.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The full \u2018Understanding Unbelief\u2019 report is available at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/understandingunbelief\/reports\/\">https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/understandingunbelief\/reports\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The global Understanding Unbelief programme to advance the scientific understanding of atheism and nonreligion presents results from its research at the Vatican in Rome at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2019\/05\/28\/atheism-conference-understanding-unbelief\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34790,"featured_media":9909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,18581],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34790"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10662"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10665,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions\/10665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}