Irreligion

16% of the world’s population is not affiliated with a religion, while 84% are affiliated. Varieties include atheism, agnosticism, antitheism and more. Pew projection shows that by 2050, the global non-religion population will be between 2060 and 35 million.

About Irreligion in brief

Summary IrreligionIrreligion or Nonreligion, is the absence, indifference to or rejection of religion. 16% of the world’s population is not affiliated with a religion, while 84% are affiliated. Varieties include atheism, agnosticism, antitheism and more. The global demographics of irreligion are estimated based on the former as maximum and the latter as minimum, therefore ranging between 450 million to 1.6 billion people. A study for religion and religion, projects that between 2010 and 2050, there will be some initial increases of the unaffiliated followed by a decline by 2050. By 2060, according to projections, the number of unaffiliated by 2060 will increase by 35 million to over 35 million. Since religion and fertility are positively related, non-religious identity is expected to decline as a proportion of the global population throughout the 21st century. The term irreligious is a combination of the noun religion and the ir- form of the prefix in-, signifying \”not\”.

It was first attested in French as irréligion in 1527, then in English as ir Religio in 1598, and was borrowed into Dutch as irreligie in the 17th century, though it is not certain from which language. Many East Asians identify as \”not religious\”, but \”religion\” in that context refers only to Buddhism or Christianity. In the Muslim world, those who claim to be ‘not religious’ mostly imply not strictly observing Islam, and in Israel, being ‘secular’ means not strictly observe Orthodox Judaism. In the United States, many American Jews share the worldviews of nonreligious people though affiliated a Jewish denomination in Russia, without much concrete reasons for it, and with a growing identification with Eastern Orthodoxy in the U.S. A Pew projection shows that by 2050, the global non-religion population will be between 2060 and 35 million, with a decline in fertility rates among this demographic group.