OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
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.’
