The Global Variation of Non-religious Worldviews

Abstract

This chapter explores the worldviews and values from a pooled data of non-religious young adults undergoing higher education from 12 countries. From an initial pool of 559, 75 respondents were chosen based on screening questions on religious identity and belonging. The exploration of worldview prototypes is done through utilizing Faith Q-Sort. The emerging worldview prototypes are interpreted further with the survey data, most importantly the ratings of different types of motivational values. The values survey is based on the Portrait Values Questionnaire. The findings of this study indicate that there are several non-religious outlooks that can accommodate openness towards religion or spirituality. Their only common ground is that they do not consistently reject all aspects of religion. The values of the non-religious respondents were in line with previous studies with self-direction values, but diverged by placing high value on benevolence. Interesting differences between the value profiles of the different non-religious outlook types were discovered, pointing to the relevance of taking into account the outlook variety internal to non-religion.