Summary: The proposed project will investigate how atheist and other non-religious individuals in the UK involve ‘science’, broadly conceived as a cultural institution represented in various mediated forms in public, in their identities, world-ordering and meaning making. The project will seek to complexify understandings of the role ‘science’, as a mediated cultural institution, can and does play in individuals’ lives in a modern democratic society. This research will act as a pilot for a larger, extended project that will further interrogate the relationship between science, media and belief in 21st century democratic societies.

Research Questions

What role does ‘science’ play in individuals’ atheist and non-religious identities?

• From which sources do atheist and non-religious individuals get their knowledge/understanding of science?
• How do individuals involve science in their autobiographical narratives, and how does science align with or serve to anchor their identification as ‘atheist’ or as ‘nonreligious’?
• Do atheist or non-religious peoples’ understandings of science draw on ‘religious’ representations of science presented in some popular media (as described in MasonWilkes 2020) and to what extent do individuals use these representations to ‘make sense’ of or ‘order’ their experiences?

The project fills a current gap in research literature on the role of science in atheist and other nonreligious identities. It will also provide a more nuanced understanding of science’s role in broader western cultural narratives, an understanding necessary to making sense of broader social trends currently observable in western democracies. The project addresses the aims of the network and grant scheme. Specifically, it will provide a “more comprehensive perspective of the relationship between science and religion or personal belief, across a range of religious, spiritual or non-religious beliefs”. It will also, through comparative analysis of self-described ‘atheists’ and other ‘non-religious/non-spiritual’ individuals’ (who do not explicitly define as atheist) interactions with/understandings of science, show how these have “profound impact(s) on how people express social identities and/or perceive other groups”.