Religion: Can An Atheist Be Religious?

What is atheism? Atheism is a disbelief or lack of belief in a god. It comes from a Greek word ‘atheos’ which literally means ‘without god’. This leaves two types of atheists:

1. People who do not believe god exists
2. People who lack belief in god.

What’s the difference?
People who do not believe god exist simply do not think there is anything remotely defined as ‘god’ existing. On the other hand, people who lack belief in god may not deny that a god exist, they just do not believe in him.

Can an atheist be religious?
That would largely depend on the definition of religion. However there is hardly a consistent definition of religion. This is because religion as a separate part of societal life is a modern western concept. For instance,Professor Jacob Olupona, a professor at Harvard Divinity school once said African indigenous religion cannot be separated from the everyday or mundane life. This opposes the modern construct around religion that isolates it from other aspects of life. MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion says:

“The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern.”


Still while asserting that religion, at its rudimentary core, cannot be separate from everyday life, the Macmillan Encyclopedia on Religion also insists every culture (and hence every individual) is religious:


“...almost every known culture [has] a depth dimension in cultural experiences […] toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience—varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture.”

The modern view of religion is as a result of a bias - a Judeo-Christian bias. Since Christianity and then Islam (religions gotten from Judaism) got organized, Europeans looked at religion from an ‘organized’ point of view and so religions that were not well-structured such as African religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, were not really regarded as organized religions. Although there were still called religions because they fit into the philosophical scope of what a religion should be (which a lot of people were now ignoring), they did it fit into the sociological roles and so they were not really regarded as core religions.

However since atheism is the lack of belief of the disbelief in god, and not the absence of religion , an atheist can be religious. In fact, the presence or the absence of ‘god’ does not affect the definition of religion. Furthermore, practically many people who claim to be Christians are not religious as their relationship with Christianity does not extend to their everyday mundane lives. Even so, religions like  Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and even some sexy of Christianity deny the existence of ‘gods’.