The cultural and the universal in nonbelievers: Comment on Jing (2014)

The study by Jing (2014) is examined and analyzed within a broader theoretical framework. A general definition of religion is presented, together with a brief description of what makes religion a universal product of human cognition. What we have been observing is a general decrease in religiosity as well as an increase in the number of individuals who describe themselves as nonbelievers. Secularization does not mean that religious ideas disappear, but that there is a significant decline in the allocation of material and psychological resources to supernaturalism. Chinese nonbelievers studied by Jing are not very different than nonbelievers in other cultures.