Irreligion
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Wikipedia
Featured: A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933) |
Irreligion, irreligiousness, or nonreligion is an umbrella term which, depending on context, may be understood as referring to atheism, agnosticism, deism, skepticism, freethought, secular humanism, general secularism, or heresy.
Irreligion has at least three related yet distinct meanings:
- absence of religion (either due to not having information about religion or to not believing in it)
- hostility to religion
- behaving in such a way that fails to live up to one's religious tenets
Although people classified as irreligious might not follow any religion, not all are necessarily without belief in the supernatural or in deities; such a person may be a non-religious or non-practicing theist. In particular, those who associate organized religion with negative qualities, but still hold spiritual beliefs, might describe themselves as irreligious.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Irreligion" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
