People who do not identify with any religion, often referred to as “nonreligious” or “unaffiliated,” encompass a wide range of beliefs, disbeliefs, and attitudes toward the divine, spirituality, and organized religion.
Here are a few categories that fall within this broad group:
Atheists: Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of gods. Atheists may come to this conclusion through a variety of ways, such as philosophical inquiry, a lack of evidence for deities, or issues with the concept of a deity.
Agnostics: Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. Some agnostics feel that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of deities, while others might simply not consider the question relevant or meaningful.
Secular Humanists: Secular humanism is a philosophy or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making.
Spiritual but not religious (SBNR): This group encompasses people who do not identify with a traditional religion but still consider themselves spiritual. They may believe in a higher power, engage in spiritual practices like meditation, or believe in interconnectedness, but they don’t associate these beliefs and practices with a formal religious institution.
Freethinkers: Freethinkers advocate the use of reason, skepticism, and evidence-based inquiry over dogma or tradition. While not all freethinkers are nonreligious, many reject religious doctrine in favor of individual reasoning and empiricism.
Apatheists: Apatheism is a portmanteau of “apathy” and “theism/atheism”. Apatheists are individuals who consider the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to their lives.
Skeptics: Skepticism can apply to a variety of attitudes and orientations, but in the context of religion, it often refers to people who question or doubt religious claims, particularly those that invoke the supernatural or are otherwise unverifiable.
Materialists: In the philosophical sense, materialists believe that physical matter and energy are the fundamental constituents of reality. They typically reject belief in non-material entities like spirits or deities and often reject the concept of an immaterial soul.
Deists: Deists believe in the existence of a creator on the basis of reason, but reject belief in a personal god, or a god who interacts with humans. Deists typically reject revealed religions (like Christianity or Islam), preferring naturalistic explanations for the origin and operation of the universe.
Pantheists: Pantheists identify god with the universe or see god as a cosmic, all-encompassing force. They typically reject the idea of a personal, anthropomorphic deity and may not adhere to any particular religious tradition.
Naturalists: Naturalists believe that all phenomena can be explained through natural, physical, or material causes and laws. They typically reject the supernatural, including the concept of personal gods, miracles, and the afterlife.
Existentialists: Some existentialists may be nonreligious, viewing life and the universe as devoid of inherent meaning or purpose. They often emphasize personal freedom, individualism, and the necessity of creating one’s own purpose.
Humanists: While some humanists may adhere to a religion, many are nonreligious and adopt a life stance that prioritizes human well-being, ethical conduct, and the use of reason and empirical evidence over religious doctrine.
Rationalists: Rationalists place a high value on reason and logical argumentation, often applying these methods to religious claims. They may reject religious beliefs they perceive as irrational or lacking empirical evidence.
Atheistic Buddhists: While Buddhism is often considered a religion, it does not require belief in a god or gods. Atheistic Buddhists follow the philosophical and ethical teachings of Buddhism, such as the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, but do not participate in religious rituals or venerate deities or supernatural entities.
Secular Jews: Secular Jews identify with Jewish culture and may observe some Jewish traditions, but they do not hold religious beliefs. Secular Judaism is diverse, with some secular Jews participating in community events and ceremonies while others engage with Jewish history and ethics in a purely secular context.
Ietsists: From the Dutch word “iets”, meaning “something”, Ietsism is the belief in some form of transcendent power without adhering to a specific religion or notion of God. Ietsists might believe in a higher power, life after death, and/or supernatural phenomena, but do not subscribe to a specific religious dogma.
Ignostics: Ignosticism, or igtheism, is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless, because the term “god” has no coherent and unambiguous definition.
Post-theists: Post-theism is a variant of nontheism that proposes that the division of theism vs. atheism is obsolete, that God belongs to a stage of human development now past. In this view, belief in God was a useful phase in human evolution but humanity has now reached a stage where it can discard this belief.
Cultural Christians: Cultural Christians identify with Christian culture but do not hold Christian beliefs. They may celebrate Christian holidays, use Christian symbolism, and appreciate Christian contributions to art, music, and literature without believing in God or adhering to Christian doctrine.
Self-Reliance: This isn’t an “ism,” but it’s a philosophical idea popularized by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.” Emerson argued that individuals should trust their own intuition and instincts, rather than conforming to societal expectations or religious doctrines.
Autodeism: This term, derived from ‘auto’ meaning self and ‘deism’ meaning belief in god, is used sometimes to describe a belief system that reveres one’s self as a god.
Here are some more philosophical “-isms”
Hedonism: This is the philosophical belief that pleasure or happiness is the highest good in life. Some hedonists might argue that we should do things that make us happy, and avoid things that make us unhappy.
Utilitarianism: This is the philosophy that the best action is the one that maximizes utility, which is usually defined as that which produces the greatest well-being of the greatest number of people.
Stoicism: This ancient Greek philosophy taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
There are countless philosophical and religious “-isms” that describe various belief systems for individuals who primarily believe in themselves might identify with:
Individualism: Individualism is a social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual over the community or a collective group. It encourages individual goals and independence.
Egoism: Egoism is the philosophy that the self should be or is the motivation and goal of one’s own action. It’s usually contrasted with altruism.
Nihilism: Nihilism is a philosophy that rejects universal principles such as religion, laws, and values. Some nihilists might argue that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.
Subjectivism: Subjectivism is the doctrine that “all knowledge is subjective,” and that there is no external or objective truth.
Relativism: Relativism is the belief that different things are true, right, or beautiful for different people at different times. It often includes moral relativism (ethics depend on the social context) and cognitive relativism (knowledge of truth depends on the social context).
Solipsism: Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist. In other words, solipsists maintain that knowledge of anything outside one’s mind is unsure.
Empiricism: Empiricism is the belief that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience, emphasizing evidence and experience rather than innate ideas.
Positivism: Positivism is a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism.
Skepticism: Skepticism questions the validity of some or all types of claims to knowledge. Skeptics often question religious claims due to a lack of evidence.