Review of Related Literature (Atheism in Today’s Generation)

This paper aims to delve deeper in the experiences of teenagers who are currently in their

college years after discovering that they are atheists. The researchers propose to find out what led

these teenagers to become atheists. The paper focuses on the process of becoming an atheists and

its effect on the individual. The researchers had conducted a one-on-one interview with four (4)

participants between the ages of nineteen (19) and twenty (20). All the participants were Filipino

and a self-identified atheist. Also, the researchers analyzed the result of the interview using the

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method guided by the Constructivist-

Interpretivist Theory.

This study is about the identity formation of self-avowed college atheists. Guided

primarily by the narrative research design, individual life stories of 13 students in the University

of the Philippines Los Baños were analyzed. As qualitative research in this area is still in its

beginning stages, this study is meant to make both a methodological and theoretical contribution

to the study of contemporary Filipino atheists. The results of the study are summed up in a grand

narrative of atheist identity construction with four phases: 1) subscribing to theism, 2) doubting

theism, 3) turning away from theism, and 4) embracing atheism.

Among worldviews, in addition to the options of materialist atheism, pantheism and

personal theism, there exists a fourth, “local emergentism”. It holds that there are no gods, nor

does the universe overall have divine aspects or any purpose. But locally, in our region of space

and time, the properties of matter have given rise to entities which are completely different from

matter in kind and to a degree god-like: consciousnesses with rational powers and intrinsic

worth. The emergentist option is compared with the standard alternatives and the arguments for
 and against it are laid out. It is argued that, among options in the philosophy of religion, it

involves the minimal reworking of the manifest image of common sense. Hence it deserves a

place at the table in arguments as to the overall nature of the universe.

Social media have played a major role as a place where one can meet and socialize with

like-minded people, and this is especially important for marginalized groups. Atheists depict

such a group in Indonesia where public expressions of atheism are punishable. Whereas social

media often plays an important role in finding like-minded people, it is also potentially

dangerous to reject religion on social media. In this research workshop, I argue that insights into

the ways in which atheists use and engage in social media groups are crucial if one wants to

know more about atheist ways of life in Indonesia. However, atheist groups are subject to

internal fragmentation, as atheism in Indonesia is highly diverse, and, as a researcher, one can

find oneself caught up in these internal struggles. Finally, I argue that social media research is an

important addition to offline research, since it enables the researcher, especially when dealing

with sensitive issues and identities, to directly enter and critically engage with the premises in

which such identities are constituted and developed.

This article introduces a review symposium on Jayeel Serrano Cornelio’s 2016 book

Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines: Young People Reinterpreting Religion. It

presents the four contributions to the review symposium as well as Cornelio’s response and

relates the discussion of the book to the broader necessity of developing new perspectives on

religion in the Philippines.

This diploma work analyzes the contemporary rise of the number of atheists in the United

States of America, basing this presupposition on numerous nation-wide surveys, primarily

 conducted by Gallup Poll and Pew Research Center. It goes into depth on the definition of

atheism and strictly delineates the meaning of this word and the use of its alternatives in the

work. Given the fact that the thesis is written by a Czech author, it also provides necessary

background covering the differences between Czech atheism and American atheism. Since the

work is purposely not one of literary analysis but rather of socio-political and cultural nature,

reasons for this decision are given in a separate subchapter analyzing Flannery O'Connor's novel

Wise Blood. History of atheism in America is touched upon in the beginning of Chapter 3, but

since the fundamental focus of this work is on the contemporary state of affairs, the roots of

modern atheism in America are sought after mainly in the twentieth century. In particular, the

greatest causes of the weakening of church's power and the rise of secularism (or atheism, for

that matter) are given as following: Madalyn Murray O'Hair's fights against church's influence in

public schools and against its public funding; the argument about the non-scientific nature of

belief.

This article analyses the political situation of non-believers in Indonesia, a state based on

the belief in one almighty God or a divine entity (Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa) as depicted in the

national ideology of Pancasila. Applying an ethnographic view, the contribution suggests that

atheists are, on the one hand, outside of politics, since political culture in Indonesia requires

references to religion, which are used to construct the narrative of Indonesia as a religious

harmony state. On the other hand, their atheism can enable them to see fundamental antagonisms

within society and politics to which many other Indonesian turn a blind eye. In order to give an

impression of the multifaceted political attitudes of atheists in Indonesia, this article outlines

some examples of atheist life in Jakarta and investigates why some situate themselves outside,

some within, the political realm.

 In this paper I demonstrate how certain contemporary atheists have problematically

conflated atheism with agnosticism (knowingly or unknowingly). The first type of conflation is

semantic fusion, where the lack of belief in God is combined with the outright denial of God,

under the single label of ‘atheism’. The second is morphological fission which involves the

separation of atheism into two subcategories where lack of belief in God is labelled as negative

atheism and outright denial of God as positive atheism – and while here they are more explicitly

demarcated, they are still positioned under the broad notion of atheism. I argue in this paper that

atheism should be better used as the propositional denial of God and that uncertainty and

unknowability about God should be reserved to characterise agnosticism. Conflating these

positions under the single term ‘atheism’ mischaracterises agnostics and inflates the territory of

atheists. In clarifying these terms, I review how the nuances in the prefix a- in atheism have

potentially contributed towards these misnomers. I also suggest the use of the categories ‘local

atheism’ and ‘global atheism’ to clarify on whom the burden of proof lies within the discourse.

In the current study, we look at atheist or secular identities in different religious

landscapes: In the U.S., the majority of the population indicates a belief in God. In West

Germany, one third of the population reports no religious affiliation and a quarter identifies as

“not religious,” and in East Germany, most of the population explicitly identifies as atheist.

Drawing on atheist worldview and identity literature from multiple disciplines, and using

quantitative and qualitative data obtained in the U.S. and Germany during the “Bielefeld-based

Cross-Cultural Study on the Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality,” we examine self-

identified atheists. First, self-identified atheist participants are portrayed quantitatively based on

constructs expected to highlight differences between atheists and other “nones” and religious or

spiritual persons: openness, a personality trait (NEO-FFI) documented to be higher in

 nonbelievers, positive relations, a dimension of eudaimonic well-being as indicator of social

integration, generativity, concern for the welfare of future generations, and experiences of

transcendence or “mysticism.” Second, four case studies are presented that illustrate the wide

range of distinct atheist beliefs, biographical experiences, and ideological positions by examining

individuals’ subjective definitions of “religion” and “spirituality” and personal interviews. The

semistructured Faith Development Interview (FDI; Fowler, 1981) examines vertical and

horizontal transcendence. By drawing on examples from our interviews, we show different

descriptions of one’s atheist worldview or “faith” in autobiographical remembering and

reasoning. Thus, we work from a nomothetic toward an idiographic comparative perspective.

(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the cognitive foundations of

religion and experimental methods have been used to explain religious behaviours. However, in

the world, there are a substantial number of non-believers (atheists), and this has been a largely

unknown field for experimental and more basic research informed by cognitive science. This has

now changed and in this review, I cover three domains of study. First, studies in which belief in

God has been manipulated in the direction of showing less belief are reviewed. For example, it is

shown that analytical thinking reduces religious belief. Second, recent studies on cognitive bias

against atheists are covered showing that atheists are distrusted, elicit disgust and are viewed as

immoral both explicitly and implicitly. Third, I review studies in which prejudice against atheists

has been experimentally manipulated showing that it is possible to reduce bias against atheists. I

conclude the paper arguing that the bias against atheists need to be investigated in the

Scandinavian countries.
References

Agustin, B. P., Ching, A. N., Puno, J. P., & Rentoy, C. G. (2016). Straying from the faith:

Experiences of teenagers who turned to atheism. Retrieved from

https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/5969

Aldama, Prince Kennex R., "Becoming Godless: exploring the life story of college atheists of UP

Los Banos" (2021). Journal Article. 3947. https://www.ukdr.uplb.edu.ph/journal-articles/3947

Franklin, James (2019). Emergentism as an option in the philosophy of religion: between

materialist atheism and pantheism. Suri: Journal of the Philosophical Association of the

Philippines 7 (2):1-22. https://suri.pap73.org/issue12/Franklin_SURI_2019-20.pdf

Duile, T. (2021). Social Media in Research on a Marginalized Identity: The Case of Atheism in

Indonesia. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 14(1), 121–128.

https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0049

Hermann, A. (2018). Introduction to a Review Symposium on Jayeel S. Cornelio’s <em>Being

Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines</em> (2016): New Perspectives on Contemporary

Filipino Catholicism. Journal of World Christianity, 8(2), 135–141.

https://doi.org/10.5325/jworlchri.8.2.0135

Koranda, David. Atheism in America. 2017. Diplomová práce. Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická

fakulta, Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur. Vedoucí práce Robbins, David Lee.

https://dspace.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.11956/2459
Timo Duile (2020) Being Atheist in the Religious Harmony State of Indonesia, The Asia

Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 21:5, 450-465, DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2020.1829022

Malik, S. (2018). Defining Atheism and the Burden of Proof. Philosophy, 93(2), 279-301.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819118000074

Keller, B., Bullik, R., Klein, C., & Swanson, S. B. (2018). Profiling atheist world views in

different cultural contexts: Developmental trajectories and accounts. Psychology of

Religion and Spirituality, 10(3), 229–243. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000212

Gerhard Andersson (2016) Atheism and how it is perceived: Manipulation of, bias

against and ways to reduce the bias, Nordic Psychology, 68:3, 194-203, DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1080/19012276.2015.1125304