Can you avoid/disable making your religion in this game?

[Memento Mori]

Title says it, is it possible to just not make my religion in this game?

[AmesNFire]

It's pretty hands off but will happen regardless, although you can later switch to an 'Athiesm' religion that operates even more independently.

[DNLH]

As poster before me wrote, you'll be pretty much forced to get at least a proto-belief for your people (choice between Polytheism and Shamanism), but later on a Civic will unlock that will either allow you to opt out (Secularism) or bring on your own 'irreligion religion' (Atheism). Both options are inferior to actually having a religion, tho, secularism just shields you from aggressively religious empires having a legitimate casus belli against you by demanding conversion, iirc, and atheism serves just a purpose of nullifying everyone's else religion bonuses (and funnily enough it spreads by Faith).

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by DNLH:

atheism serves just a purpose of nullifying everyone's else religion bonuses (and funnily enough it spreads by Faith).

Amusingly Atheism works best in the game if you had the dominant worldwide faith & then switched to it, otherwise it tends to get drowned out or stuck in specific regions.
I do hope they'll eventually update the Civics & Religious stuff for this game, as it's currently in a weird spot even if it's beneficial.

[DNLH]

IMO, Irreligion should really just hard-pivot the Population, Holy Sites and Religious Districts Faith production to generating Money/Science/Influence (showing the turning of buildings into tourist traps, archaeological and/or heritage sites), and then have Atheism come with its own set of Tenets, mostly focusing on generating Faith from generic districts. The problem with Atheism is that it just brings no benefits, and Secularism is even worse, because you opt out of benefits and don't even contest others keeping them. It's a non-choice when you lead the major religion, and barely a 'oh yeah? Screw you, then' choice when someone flooded you with theirs.

[Memento Mori]

Well, thanks for answering!

[jonnin]

Specifically you can 'not take' the religious civics and not build a stone circle or whatever. However you are making the game much harder by doing so as the stone circles help stabilize large cities and religious perks have several large positive effects on your society. Not having much faith, you absorb it from your neighbors and that can be an issue as well, similar to them trying to force civics on you every few turns. You need to be pushing back instead of absorbing, or you get stuck in a terrible cycle of taking unwanted perks instead of good ones or paying a penalty to keep yours.