Understanding Atheism: A YouTube explainer series
Project Leads
Start and end dates: 1 August 2023 – 30 June 2024
Award: £30,000
This project will produce an educational YouTube video series on the academic study of atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of non-religion using Religion for Breakfast’s signature style of highly-produced, entertaining explainer videos that give viewers a fascinating look into religion and how we study it.
Religion for Breakfast is the largest religious studies channel on YouTube with over 650,000 subscribers and drawing 1.2 million monthly viewers. The Religion for Breakfast team publishes explainer videos on a variety of topics within the field of religious studies. The channel aims to improve the public understanding of religion (and non-religion) by both explaining topics and deconstructing the assumptions that often inform them.
Each episode of the 10-part series ‘Understanding Atheism’ will draw on a wide array of disciplines to ask big, compelling questions, such as: what does the term “atheism” mean? Are there atheistic religions? Why are some societies more atheistic than others? Are children born atheist? Do atheists have rituals? Understanding Atheism will tackle these questions and more, drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship, including research generated by Explaining Atheism’s core research and affiliated projects.
The series aims to increase the public’s understanding of atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of non-religion using engaging and intellectually robust visual storytelling. It will also contribute to elevating the poor state of the conversation about atheism on YouTube. Misinformation and polemics concerning atheism and religion are rampant on the platform. Because YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, this misinformation affects the broader state of discourse both on and offline. An educational series produced by scholars and published on the largest religious studies YouTube channel will change the conversation for the better.
