Abstract: While ‘religion’ is much studied, its absence and alternatives receive less attention. Yet such ‘unbelief’ is both widespread and growing, producing public debates about the impacts of secularism and the inclusion of nonreligious individuals and perspectives in public policy.

In this talk, I will present the findings of the Understanding Unbelief (UU) programme (2017-2020), an interdisciplinary, multi-national research effort to better understand atheism and agnosticism. I will focus on two results. The first is that few atheists and agnostics are scientific naturalists. The second is that they differ relatively little from general populations in their values. I will discuss the implications of these findings both for common stereotypes of ‘unbelievers’ and for our scientific understanding of ‘belief.’