Archives for March 2016

SIX-SIX News, an independent media outlet in Singapore, wrote a feature about the rising number of non-religious Singapore residents. They interviewed one of our members, Pearl Lin, as well as Leftwrite Center member Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib with regards to relations between the religious and non-religious. Read more here:

http://www.six-six.com/article/keeping-the-faith-with-the-faithless-atheistic-agnostic

An excerpt from the article:

The choice between identifying as an atheist and an agnostic can be a fraught one. Pearl Lin says that for a long time she was on the fence, but counts herself as an agnostic. She considers herself first and foremost, though, as a humanist.

“It’s basically believing in the basic goodness of people,” she explains. The 22-year-old student is an executive committee member of the Humanist Society (Singapore). The organisation has been around since 2010 and currently has around 150 members who are atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and humanists.

The ‘humanist’ tag is more palatable than the ‘atheist’ one, it would seem. “It sounds a little less aggressive. If you say you are an atheist, people have this preconceived notion of what an atheist is. People just think you are completely against religion and so I think they are more comfortable with our identifying as humanists because a lot of people are not sure what it is. 

“And from there you can kind of educate them on the meaning and tell them that basically we’re just a bunch of people who believe in reason and science, and also that we do not need organised religion to tell us what is right or wrong.”

The Straits Times has published a feature on the rising number of non-religious youth in Singapore, quoting several academics, religious leaders and one of our members. Our organisation was also mentioned for our efforts at interfaith dialogues as a voice for the non-religious, which tend to be “excluded and forgotten”.

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/youth-in-singapore-shunning-religion

Points brought up by academics and religious leaders:

• The rise in is in tandem with an increasingly educated, and more common for individuals who grew up in families where religion was already nominally practised.
• Traditional religions have also been slow to engage young people and help them appreciate their faith.
  Change in attitudes among the young, who have become more independent in their thinking.
• Exposure to range of ideologies, which results in a spectrum of views within the non-religious category.
• Relative stability of a country also means there is less concern about the future because the present is “non-threatening”. Less incentive to look to religion for divine intervention or for security.
• Multi- religious make-up of Singapore and the open-door policy of religious institutions here facilitate “shopping” for a religion.
• Some young people could also be identifying more with liberal ideologies that clash with religious teachings on topics such as homosexuality.
• High-profile failures of institutional religions to uphold their credibility as a moral voice, which may also have turned some people away from religion.

Following the release of General Household Survey 2015 report that showed more Singapore residents not identifying themselves with any religion, we have written a letter to TODAY Voices responding to academics’ views that non-religious residents could still be religious, and at the same time calling for more studies on the non-religious demographic.

Here’s the letter published on TODAY: http://www.todayonline.com/voices/more-studies-needed-non-religious-demographic

If URL is not working, you may refer to our unedited letter:

More studies needed on non-religious demographic

Our interview with Dan Tang (above) and how he exercised his right to wear a strainer (religious pastafarian headgear) for his driving license photo has gone viral.

It has been reported in AsiaOne, Mothership, Coconuts Singapore, and Cleo. We were also included in a Sunday Times column, Trumped-up surname and strains of pasta-mania, on March 6, 2016.

Some screenshots:

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