Summary: The researchers of this project previously participated in “Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum” and produced 64 interviews and 7 focus groups on the perceptions of Argentinians (scientists and from the general public) about the relationship between science and religion. This project has already produced 2 written articles (another one is in the process of being written), and has allowed a first exploration of a previously unstudied topic in Argentina.
This exploratory study revealed some trends which deserve more research for a deeper understanding. Some of these are related to non-religious individuals. First, we observed important differences between agnostics and atheists (with have no relevant differences in their identities in Argentina) and non-religious individuals. While the former show greater distancing from supernatural ideas, the latter tend to reject religious institutions, but not necessarily beliefs such as God, Jesus Christ, energy, spirits and life after death. Secondly, non-religious people with supernatural beliefs tend to value science, but have views that are not necessarily consistent with Western science: for example, they believe in astrology or accept homeopathy.
In this project we propose to deepen the understanding of those non-religious individuals who hold supernatural beliefs by exploring questions like:
how does this group define religion and why do they distance themselves from it?
How does this group perceive science and to what extent do they use scientific discourse to support their views?
Among those who reject institutions, but value science: why do they perceive science as part of the institutions?
What positions do they hold about the relationship between science and religion?
Which thinkers or organisations inspire their beliefs?
What is their position regarding the conflict narrative?
We propose to explore these questions through a qualitative study based on 20 in depth interviews with non-religious individuals with supernatural beliefs. This data will be analysed with the method of Grounded Theory (Soneira, 2015) to develop theory. The main output of the project will be a paper submitted to an international journal of sociology of religion.
