Psychology of religious belief, expanded
To understand the full spectrum of the human religious experience, it makes sense to study unbelievers, who have almost certainly been exposed to religious beliefs but chosen not to accept them, as well as believers. Researchers in the psychology department at the University of Waterloo are surveying atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, skeptics, humanists, etc., to try to get a handle on how they view and experience life. If you fall into any of those categories, consider contributing your data points. You can find the survey and more at the Atheism Rising web site. Yes, you probably live in a country that is WEIRD (or maybe WIRED or even WIDER, as a friend pointed out), but they’ve got to start someplace. (Although actually I’d be very interested in learning about the areligious in non-WEIRD cultures. On a somewhat-related tangent, I’ve long wondered what freethinking types did during the Middle Ages in Europe, for example, or in other times and places where everyone was assumed to belong to the prevailing religion.)
IS not everyone assumed to belong to a prevailing religion?
It probably depends on where you live. I’m in a relatively liberal university town, and at least in the circles I hang out in, it’s safe to assume there are some nonbelievers in the mix. I’m guessing much of Europe is secular enough that people are not automatically assumed to belong to any particular religion. However, I’m sure there are places in the US where it is assumed that everyone is or should be Christian (or at least all respectable folk).