Atheism Is Not the Absence of Religion: Development of the Monotheist and Atheist Belief Scales and Associations With Death Anxiety and Analytic Thinking

Abstract

Many previous studies have assumed that atheism is the absence of religious belief or lies at one end of a spectrum of religiosity. In the philosophical literature, however, atheism is a positive belief system. This article describes two online studies that tested whether atheism and religion are separate, negatively correlated belief systems. In Study 1 (N = 488, 206 male, M = 31.7 years, a convenience sample recruited via Twitter), we designed a scale (the Monotheist and Atheist Beliefs Scale [MABS]) to measure religious and atheistic beliefs and used exploratory factor analysis to identify its structure. In Study 2 (N = 638, U.K. population, representative sample, 296 male, M = 45.0 years, recruited by the survey company Qualtrics), we tested the structure of the MABS with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and studied its associations with analytic thinking (using the Cognitive Reflection Test [CRT]) and death anxiety in analyses in which religiosity was treated as unidimensional and in which religiosity and atheism were treated as separate. Data from both studies supported a two-factor model. In contrast to previous studies showing that atheists are superior at analytic thinking, we found that the CRT scores were negatively associated with religious belief but had no relationship with atheistic belief. In contrast to previous studies showing a curvilinear relationship between death anxiety and religiosity, we observed that death anxiety was linearly associated with religious belief but was not associated with atheistic belief. The MABS is a useful instrument for future research.