Capstone conference

ATHEISM EXPLAINED?

Organised by

Jonathan Lanman (Queen’s University Belfast)
Lois Lee (University of Kent)
Aiyana Willard (Brunel University London)

26-28 June 2024
Oxford Museum of Natural History, Oxford, UK

About the event

Atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of non-belief in God or gods are widespread and growing, opening debates about the personal and social impacts of non-belief and how to include such perspectives in legal frameworks, education, and public policy. Further, the growth of non-belief, as well as its uneven distribution, raises questions for the scientific study of religion, culture, and secularisation about the causes of atheism. To what extent are cognitive, social, motivational, historical, and moral factors important in explaining who becomes a theist, atheist, or agnostic and why do some nations have higher percentages of atheists and agnostics than others?

Explaining Atheism (2022-2024) is a three-year international research programme based at Queen’s University Belfast. Through core research and funded projects, we have been working to develop systemic, multidisciplinary and cross-cultural accounts of the relative importance of the various causal factors for atheism hypothesised by researchers.

At our 2024 capstone conference in Oxford we will be presenting findings from our core research , affiliated projects and other researchers working in the field. Atheism Explained? will also feature the following speakers as a keynote panel reviewing the book Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society.

Registration

Registration for the event is by invitation. Invited delegates, guests and speakers will be sent a link to the registration form. The link will be sent out after 1 March 2024.

There will be no registration fees.

Other useful information

Further participation

We are not able to live stream the entire conference. We are intending to film a selection of the sessions and these will be available on our website later in the year.

Accommodation in Oxford

If the EA programme is arranging your accommodation we will have already been in touch.

Other delegates will need to make their own arrangements. We can recommend Linton Lodge and Cotswold Lodge as two hotels we’ve stayed in and enjoyed in the past. Both are an easy flat walk to the conference venue, and there are very regular busses from Banbury Road.

Many of the Colleges also offer good value self-catering or BnB accommodation. You can search vacancies on Conference Oxford or University Rooms.

Additional events of interest

Two additional conferences of note take place in Oxford in the days immediately following the Atheism Explained? conference that may interest applicants. First, the International Association for the Cognitive and Evolutionary Sciences of Religion (IACESR) will hold its 9th biennial meeting at Oxford Brookes University on 28-30 June. Second, the Cognitive Representations in Religion conference will be taking place at St. Stephen’s House, Oxford on 1-3 July.