Why Do Many "Nones" Believe in Life After Death?

According to a recent analysis in the journal SAGE Open of responses from 1973 to 2014 to the General Social Survey, the general trend over the past few decades is broadly toward less religiosity (both public and private). However, the one indicator that seems to buck this trend is belief in the afterlife, where a slight increase was recorded in recent years. A 2013 survey by the conservative Christian Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture found that even 32 percent of the group comprising atheists, agnostics, and people of no religion claim to believe that there is life after death. Why this seeming contradiction?

The U.S. is not the first place where this phenomenon has been documented. The U.K.’s Daily Mail asked several prominent thinkers how they might explain the rise in numbers of atheist Britons as well as the increase in those that believe in life after death. The proposed explanations included selfishness, incredulity at the finality of death, a desire to believe in infinite possibility, and hope for those without material possessions.

But is someone who believes in life after death still an atheist? According to Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry magazine as well as the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, the answer depends on how you define “atheism.”

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