Thomas Joseph Coleman

The six types of nonbelief: a qualitative and quantitative study of type and narrative

Extensive research has been conducted in exploration of the American religious landscape; however, only recently has social science research started to explore nonbelief in any detail. Research on nonbelief has been limited as most research focuses on the popularity of the religious “nones” or the complexities of alternative faith expressions such as spirituality. Through two studies, one qualitative and one quantitative, this research explored how nonbelievers’ self-identify. Study 1 (the qualitative study) discovered that individuals have shared definitional agreement but use different words to describe different types of nonbelief. Through thematic coding, a typology of six different types of nonbelief was observed. Those are Academic Atheists, Activist Atheist/Agnostics, Seeker Agnostics, Antitheists, Non-Theists, and the Ritual Atheists. Study 2 explored the empirical aspects of these types related to the Big Five Domain, Ryff Psychological Well-Being, Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Multidimensional Anger Inventory, Rokeach Dogmatism Scale, and intersections related to religious and spiritual ontology.

“Spirituality” and Mysticism

This chapter explores the relationship between the self-rating as “spiritual” and mysticism as measured by Hood’s Mysticism Scale. The introduction provides an overview of recent attempts to measure “spirituality” psychometrically, of the theoretical and empirical approaches to mysticism and already empirically observed relations between mysticism and “spirituality.” Many scales trying to operationalize “spirituality” lack a solid conceptual background and convincing empirical validity. Citing the work of Stace and James , Hood constructed a scale that provides detailed and measurable descriptions of mystical experiences , the Mysticism Scale. Since the Mysticism Scale measures varieties of personal experiences of unity with some kind of transcendence, it proves to be an excellent measure for what many people today call “spirituality.” This can be shown empirically by utilizing the three factor solution of the M-Scale , identified as introvertive, extrovertive, and interpretive mysticism, in structural equation models exploring the relationships between mysticism and self-rated “spirituality” as well as self-rated “religion.” This chapter concludes by arguing that “spirituality” may be the product of experiences that can be described in terms of mysticism.

What do you mean, "what does it all mean?" Atheism, nonreligion, and life meaning

Nonreligion is often thought to be commensurate with nihilism or fatalism, resulting in the perception that the nonreligious have no source of meaning in life. While views to this effect have been advanced in various arenas, no empirical evaluation of such a view has been conducted. Using data from the 2008 American General Social Survey (N = ~1,200), we investigated whether atheists, the religiously unaffiliated, and persons raised religiously unaffiliated were more likely than theists, the religiously affiliated, and persons raised with a religious affiliation to report greater levels of fatalism, nihilism, and the perception that meaning in life is self-provided. Results suggested that these groups did not differ with regard to fatalism or nihilism. However, atheists and the religiously unaffiliated (but not persons raised in a religiously unaffiliated household) were more likely to indicate that meaning in life was endogenous—that is, self-produced. While atheists and the nonreligious differed from their counterparts on source of meaning in life, this was not associated with any “penalty” for overall existential meaning.

Death, quest, and self-esteem: re-examining the role of self-esteem and religion following mortality salience

ABSTRACT Terror management theory suggests that when mortality concerns are salient, religion can serve as a defence in order to boost self-esteem and shield against the potential for anxiety. The current study examined whether individual differences in religious orientation (i.e., quest) interacted with reminders of death to influence well-being. To the extent that religiosity buffers against mortality awareness on defensiveness, the present results demonstrated that individuals high in quest orientation, in comparison to low-quest-orientated individuals, reported lower well-being (i.e., self-esteem) following reminders of death. These results add to the existing body of literature suggesting that thoughts of death can serve to decrease well-being, but that this effect is influenced by individual differences, namely trait quest religiosity.

“…if the Universe Is Beautiful, We’re Part of that Beauty.”—A “Neither Religious nor Spiritual” Biography as Horizontal Transcendence

27-year-old Isabella grew up with her parents on the Eastern Coast of the United Sates. She describes her life as “pretty boring” and “normal.” However ‘boring’ and ‘normal’ her life may have appeared to her, it is the worldview that Isabella takes—and has always had by her count—that draws great interest. Typically, many individuals who currently identify as an ‘atheist ’ also used to identify as ‘religious’ in their youth (Silver, 2013). Isabella stands out in this regard, she has never believed in a god or gods. What Coleman, Silver, and Holcombe (2013) have termed as “religio-spiritual frameworks” played no part in Isabella’s worldview. As this chapter shall demonstrate, Isabella was able to ask questions about life, make sense of her environment, and find meaning and purpose not in the confines of a religious or spiritual worldview, but, in a worldview that retained a similar sense of awe, wonder and meaning in the absence of any spiritual or religious structure—a worldview we term as ‘horizontal transcendence .’ This chapter will situate the role of the Faith Development Interview in the context of the ‘faithless ’ while drawing attention to the role of narrative in horizontal transcendence .

Spirituality and religion: An Empirical Study Using a Turkish Muslim Sample

The Psychology of Religion in Turkey is the first edited text in English to provide conceptual, historical, and empirical studies of religion in Turkey by exclusively Turkish scholars and social scientists.

Narrative Reconstruction and Content AnalysisContent Analysis in the Interpretation of “Spiritual” Biographical Trajectories for Case Studies

In this chapter we explain how we construct case studies, including analyses of narrative and content of the FDI. We take as point of departure the location of the case under study in the chart of openness to experience / mysticism . Then we proceed in direction of increasing depth of interpretation and compare the case under study with the respective focus group : First we present the results of central scales from our questionnaire, covering measures of personality , adult development and, of course, religiosity, second we turn to semantics and, in some case studies, inspect the individual semantic differentials with those of the respective focus group. Next, we present the “classic” FDI evaluation, ratings according to the Manual for faith development research along with exploratory evaluations of proxies for current concepts we consider to include. Then we turn to the FDI for a deeper analysis of content and narrative. Finally, we draw results from the different research methods together, thus achieving triangulation on the level of the single case. Now we first discuss the analysis of narrative and content and, in the second part of the chapter, we show how these are included in a case study .

“Experimenting with Ideologies…”—A “More Spiritual Than Religious” Zen Buddhist

Identity is complex; the cultural milieu of possible worldviews, and accompanying identifying terminology said to represent such a worldview, even more so. Just as this book demonstrates, a simple term such as “spirituality” can refer to a multiplicity of understandings, which may even wholly contradict one another. In our present study, Brian C. has found comfort “experimenting with ideologies,” and identity tinkering over the course of his life. As his case will demonstrate, the process of identity formation is exemplified by its disunity. To this point, Brian identifies as an atheist Zen Buddhist , who is not only “spiritual,” but also “religious.” Raised in a religion (Christianity) he identified with until adolescence, Brian had been a practicing Buddhist for several years at the time of the interview.

7 Spirituality and Religion

The Psychology of Religion in Turkey is the first edited text in English to provide conceptual, historical, and empirical studies of religion in Turkey by exclusively Turkish scholars and social scientists.

7Spirituality and Religion

The Psychology of Religion in Turkey is the first edited text in English to provide conceptual, historical, and empirical studies of religion in Turkey by exclusively Turkish scholars and social scientists.