Increase in people identifying as having No Religion

The census form doesn't "assume that you have some form of religion"; it explicitly offers "no religion" as a box you can tick.

The census doesn't distinguish between practising atheists and cultural atheists either. So what? The census collects information about people's identification. Further information about what that identification means and how it expresses itself is certainly interesting, but its not the kind of information that lends itself to being collected in a census, and no country in the world does this through its census. For that you want qualitative, not quantative research (and such research has been undertaken in Ireland, and you will find it if you google, and it will be a lot more use to you than anything that could be garnered through the census.

smacl wrote: »

What exactly is a practising atheist, or a cultural atheist for that matter? The census doesn't actually allow for atheism at all, as No religion is not a synonym for atheist.

The sentence doesn't suggest atheism as a possible answer, but it does allow for it, since people can (and do) write "atheist" in the "other" box. As a result we can analyse the unbelieving community as between those identifying as atheists, those identifying as agnostics, those who merely state that they have no religion and those who simply don't answer the question on religion (though of course the latter group may not all be unbelievers).

smacl wrote: »

e.g, if you accept that there are some Catholics that don't believe in God but still tow the line from a cultural standpoint, which box should they tick?

They should tick the box that reflects their identity (just as people should do if they have no religion but nevertheless believe in God).

smacl wrote: »

It is also dubious quantitative data though as it is pigeon holing a wide ranging subjective value and going on to treat it as a valid discrete result for statistical purposes, e.g. one person declaring themselves Catholic might have diametrically opposed views, ethos and beliefs to another. From what I can see, it is the only such subjective question on the census, and while the results are interesting I don't think they're a useful basis for any decision making.

Question 11 about "ethnic or cultural background" is similar in addressing topics that are cultural constructs and that may be differently understood by different respondents.

As for how to understand the answers to these questions and how useful they are, it's worth pointing out that very similar questions are asked in the censuses of many other countries, so there appears to be quite a widespread belief that they are useful and meaningful. The UK Office of National Statistics engaged in public consultation about the census form a few years back and then published the results; nearly all of the stakeholders consulted wanted the religion question retained for a variety of (stated) reasons, and in fact the only respondents who opposed the inclusion of the question were those who had an ideological reason for doing so. If you google it you'll find the published report on the consultation.

Finally, in the present forum it's worth pointing out that the census question provides powerful and concrete evidence of the growth of unbelief in Ireland, and a quite detailed demographic picture of the unbelieving community, and the corresponding decline in identification with a religion. Is that really information that you'd prefer not to have?

Peregrinus wrote: »

The census form doesn't "assume that you have some form of religion"; it explicitly offers "no religion" as a box you can tick.

I think eeguy's point is valid. To be a neutral question it should ask 'do you follow a religion yes/no? please specify' or words to that effect.

smacl wrote: »

if you accept that there are some Catholics that don't believe in God but still tow the line from a cultural standpoint, which box should they tick?

How is this in any way possible? Don't the two go hand in hand, if you identify as a catholic, by extension you have to believe in god, whether you're a practicing catholic or not.

looksee wrote: »

I think eeguy's point is valid. To be a neutral question it should ask 'do you follow a religion yes/no? please specify' or words to that effect.

Well, as pointed out back on page 2 of this thread, Ireland would be out of line internationally in taking that approach.

I understand why you feel that form of question would be "neutral", but in order to achieve what you regard as neutrality you're complicating the question and making two distinct demands on respondents - Do you follow a religion? Specify.

You'd want to talk to the occupational linguists and the psychologists about whether this makes for a better designed form, leading to a better response rate or better data, but there's a bit of a clue in the fact that no other country takes this approach, and in the fact that the other census questions are framed as simply as possible and seek to elicit only one item of information. Compound structures in census questions are not a good idea.

Basically, there's no evidence that the question "What is your religion?" confuses people who have no religion, and if you're making a case to change the question that evidence is the first thing you're going to need. "What soccer team do you follow?" is not a question that stumps people who have no interest in soccer, especially when "I have no interest in soccer" is one of the answers suggested. And I think the same goes for religion, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.

A comparison with section 14 of the census form is interesting. Section 14 has two questions. First, "can you speak Irish?", with "Yes" and "No" boxes. Secondly, "If 'Yes', do you speak Irish . . . ," followed by boxes for "daily", "weekly", etc, all the way to "never".

In theory, you could take the same approach in section 12, first of all asking about religions identification and then following up with a qualitative question to elicit more information. But you have two problems:

First, you'd have to decide what quality you were measuring in the follow-up question. Frequency of attendance at worship? Intensity of religious belief? Fidelity to the ethical precepts of the religion? Firmness of identification? Comprehensiveness of embrace of teachings? And you'd need to choose a quality which was equally valid for/relevant to all the possible religious identifications. (Good luck with that.)

Secondly, you'd need to make a case about why the state should care about this particular quality. What public policy is served by gathering this information? What is it needed for? And, if there is a public policy objective here in gathering this information, is the census the best place to achieve it?

smacl wrote: »

Just because someone puts in atheist under Other, write in your RELIGION (n.b. their capitalisation, not mine) does not make atheism a religion. The possibility exists to write whatever nonsense you care to in that box, but that does not make every answer valid or reasonable. You could argue that the fault is largely with the question.

I'm not saying that atheism is a religion. I don't believe it is.

Nor am I saying that those who write "atheist" in the box are offering an invalid answer to the question.

smacl wrote: »

Which for a Catholic that doesn't believe in God is what exactly?

"Catholic", evidently. If it wasn't, they wouldn't have ticked the "Catholic" box.

smacl wrote: »

Argumentum ad populum?

No, I don't think so. Census forms aren't designed by the masses; they're very carefully designed by people who are interested in securing solid and valuable data, and who draw on considerable experience and expertise, and who mostly have no emotional or ideological investment one way or the other in either talking up or talking down the extent of religious identification. And when a bunch of different attempts to frame a question to do this in different countries all come up with remarkable similar questions, that's probably not a coincidence; there are some principles widely accepted by statisticians and social researchers which are being applied here which tend to the conclusion that this is the optimal form of the question.

smacl wrote: »

The information shows that the majority of Irish people identify as Catholic. What it doesn't show is that the majority of Irish people reject Catholic dogma on many social issues and would like to see a greater separation of church and state. As such, the census results on religion lend a favourable bias to the RCC which is undeserved.

I disagree. The census doesn't show that that the majority reject much Catholic dogma or that they would like to see greater separation of church and state, but nor does it show or attempt to show the contrary. It offers no information at all on that subject. As such, I don't think it can be said to be biassed one way or the other.

Mod: the car question is irrelevant, please drop it.