The number
of people in Western countries, including Ireland, who say they belong to no
religion is on the increase. Census 2011 showed that almost six percent of
Irish people say they belong to no religion, while a new poll in the US puts
the figure at one in five.

But can
Richard Dawkins (pictured) and other atheists claim all these people for their camp? The
short answer is, absolutely not.

For example,
the aforementioned American poll, by the Pew Forum, showed that more than half (55 percent) of those who claim
no religious affiliation describe themselves as either ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’.

This
automatically rules them out of the Richard Dawkins camp. In fact only seven
percent said they were atheists or agnostics and this isn’t broken down any
further so we don’t know precisely the number who say they are atheists.

In
addition, a third of those who said they are neither religious nor spiritual
pray at least once a month.

In other
words what we’re discovering is that the religiously unaffiliated are a diverse
bunch. The only generalisation that can be made about them is that they do not
formally belong to any religion, that is, they are not interested in corporate religion
or worship.

To put it
another way, they are individualists in a highly individualistic age, the
equivalent of people who are not politically affiliated and who may not belong
to any organisation of any kind but who are simply free floaters. As we know, a person who is not politically unaffiliated isn’t necessarily unterested in politics, never mind hostile to it.

Evidently the same applies to many of those who are not affiliated to any particular religion.