Constitutional Convention insults secular citizens with 2% vote on Church & State

Brown Bomber · 14-12-2013 06:04PM

koth wrote: »

to ascertain the veracity of Michaels figures you have to audit all submissions and cross check the totals with Michaels figures.

If you are confused let's go back to the start. Michael has claimed that Separation of Church and State was a) The mos submitted and b) The most raised in the public meetings.

Are his claims factual? Why do you think so?

++++++++++

My answer is I don't know. We haven't been provided with any specific evidence to ascertain the truth.

Brown Bomber · 14-12-2013 06:05PM

Nodin wrote: »

Dear me. "not supposed to be perfect" yet its enough to derail a serious thread by making claims on it?

As he mentions the separation of church and state theres no reason not to count it towards same.

Take 2. The submitters words, not mine. Impossible to place in a SINGLE category.

This submission is relevant to all six topics under consideration by the Constitutional Convention:

Protection of the Environment

Bill of Rights

Economic and Social Rights

Political and Institutional Reform

Church and state

Public morality

Delirium · 14-12-2013 06:09PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

If you are confused let's go back to the start. Michael has claimed that Separation of Church and State was a) The mos submitted and b) The most raised in the public meetings.

Are his claims factual? Why do you think so?

Don't know as I haven't counted all the submissions. I'd be leaning more to yes than no based on the cursory look at the submissions I did.

++++++++++

My answer is I don't know. We haven't been provided with any specific evidence to ascertain the truth.

How can it be any more specific than an itemised list of every submission made? If you doubt Michael do the audit on the submissions on the convention website.

Brown Bomber · 14-12-2013 06:14PM

koth wrote: »

Don't know as I haven't counted all the submissions. I'd be leaning more to yes than no based on the cursory look at the submissions I did.

So I don't and you don't know. Currently between us both Michael's claim is dubious.

Does anyone know?

koth wrote: »

How can it be any more specific than an itemised list of every submission made? If you doubt Michael do the audit on the submissions on the convention website.

By linking the names provided to the submissions and providing the pages where this evidence can be checked.

Nodin · 14-12-2013 06:27PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Take 2. The submitters words, not mine. Impossible to place in a SINGLE category.

Then place it in all applicable. Fairly simple, unless you're being intellectually dishonest......

Brown Bomber · 14-12-2013 06:38PM

Nodin wrote: »

Then place it in all applicable. Fairly simple, unless you're being intellectually dishonest......

OK fine. Consider it done, though it changes nothing. Changing all and changing none has the same effect i.e. none.

Same question to you:

. Michael has claimed that Separation of Church and State was a) The mos submitted and b) The most raised in the public meetings.

Are his claims factual? Why do you think so?

Delirium · 14-12-2013 06:53PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

So I don't and you don't know. Currently between us both Michael's claim is dubious.

Does anyone know?

By linking the names provided to the submissions and providing the pages where this evidence can be checked.

but all submissions need to be counted, how else would you determine Michaels figures are wrong? All the info is on the website.

Nodin · 14-12-2013 07:00PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

OK fine. Consider it done, though it changes nothing.........:

It changes nothing to "One", to be precise.

Brown Bomber · 14-12-2013 07:01PM

koth wrote: »

but all submissions need to be counted, how else would you determine Michaels figures are wrong? All the info is on the website.

It s not up to me to prove Michael's assertion wrong it is up to him to prove his assertion factual.

What would be your response to a theist who asked you to prove that there is no God?

The burden of proof lies with michael, not me.

Brown Bomber · 14-12-2013 07:04PM

Nodin wrote: »

It changes nothing to "One", to be precise.

Uhhuh, it also adds a plus 1 to everything else and since the object of the exercise was to get and idea of the number of submissions relative to each other it makes no difference.

now could you answer the previous question please?

Delirium · 14-12-2013 07:08PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

It s not up to me to prove Michael's assertion wrong it is up to him to prove his assertion factual.

What would be your response to a theist who asked you to prove that there is no God?

The burden of proof lies with michael, not me.

and Michael has provided the submissions via the convention website. If you have a problem with his claims, then do the homework of auditing the submissions.

Brown Bomber · 14-12-2013 07:11PM

koth wrote: »

and Michael has provided the submissions via the convention website. If you have a problem with his claims, then do the homework of auditing the submissions.

Yes, and i provided the same evidence to show that the deportation of gingers was most. Submitted.

Why is this any different?

Delirium · 14-12-2013 07:19PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Yes, and i provided the same evidence to show that the deportation of gingers was most. Submitted.

Why is this any different?

you mean the silly claim you pulled out of the sky? One can only wonder.

Michael Nugent · 14-12-2013 07:20PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

And are you going to show me an aerial photograph of loch ness next as evidence that the monster is in there somewhere?

Brown Bomber wrote: »

That same list in fact actually shows that the highest numbers number of submissions were in support of bussing every ginger in the land across the border and annulling their citizenship.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

What would be your response to a theist who asked you to prove that there is no God?

Ah, right.

I'm sorry I made the mistake of taking your earlier comments seriously.

Nodin · 14-12-2013 07:32PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Uhhuh, it also adds a plus 1 to everything else and since the object of the exercise was to get and idea of the number of submissions relative to each other it makes no difference.

now could you answer the previous question please?

I've no idea if his claims are factual. I do know that yours aren't, so I'm working from that.

robindch · 15-12-2013 04:16PM

Folks, I haven't counted submissions myself, but until I do, I think the analyses provided by Michael and Gordon are accurate and sufficient, and disputation will not shed any more light on the Convention's strange decision.

Next topic, please.

Brown Bomber · 16-12-2013 12:09AM

The Lobbyists Atheist Ireland lambasted the Constitutional Convention here and elsewhere; including their own site for the outrageous "insult" caused to them and "secular Citizens" everywhere with the Convention prioritising basic human rights for Irish Citizens and political reform Before their own agenda.

The faulty reasoning behind this was the unsupported claims that a) It had the most support in public meetings and b) Separation of Church State received the most submissions from the public.

These are the numbers published by Atheist Ireland.

190 Separation of Church and State
166 ESC rights
160 Environment
110 Family and Issues of Morality
53 Political and Institutional Reform
32 Bill of Rights

I've gone through the submissions one-by-one and it appears to me that at best someone has miscalculated and inflated the seperation of Church and State figures and at worst has intentionally tried to mislead.

This is what I got. I didn't know how to insert an excel file into here so I put it into a blog

http://constitutionalconventionsubmissionscount.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/submissions-to-the-irish-constitutional-convention-by-type/?preview=true&preview_id=8&preview_nonce=10ab8a5190&post_format=standard

robindch · 16-12-2013 12:25AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

This is what I got

If you want to continue this thread, then I suggest you take the list of submissions from here and list them sequentially, with each one allocated to whatever category it's due, then post the results.

There's no need for a separate thread to do this and if you don't have a licensed copy of Excel, then feel free to try the equivalent offerings from Open Office or Libre Office.

Brown Bomber · 16-12-2013 12:29AM

robindch wrote: »

If you want to continue this thread, then I suggest you take the list of submissions from here and list them sequentially, with each one allocated to whatever category it's due, then post the results.

???

That is what is in the link.
Since you were allowing Michael to shift the burden of proof that is exactly what I did do.

C Con Submissions Before Oct 25

C Con Submissions After October 25

16-12-2013 02:18AM

Michael Nugent wrote: »

That's not actually the case.

The most orchestrated campaign by far was for ESC Rights, which ended up on the agenda. Without that campaign, I doubt many of the Convention members would even be familiar with the term ESC Rights. That campaign involved a coordinated network of organisations, some with full-time paid employees, working over a period of many months, holding seminars and lobbying politicians, and coordinating written submissions.

The second most orchestrated campaign was for the Environment. Again, this involved several organisations over a period of many months, lobbying politicians and coordinating written submissions.

Ours was probably the third most orchestrated, and it was esssentially run by one organisation, with no staff and very limited resources. We only really started after the Convention had dealt with blasphemy, because up to then we had to focus our resources on ensuring that that was passed.

And when we did encourage people to make written submissions, we did not coordinate them with boilerplate submissions, but instead asked people to write in their own words why they felt the issue should be addressed.

Indeed, the Convention Secretariat specifically told us that it was noticeable that the Church and State submissions were individually written by people describing their own opinions when compared to some other submissions.

Finally, there was a late campaign for Family and Issues of Morality, resulting in a lot of submissions starting partway through the public meeting process.

The only two of the six categories for which there was not an orchestrated campaign were political and institutional reform and bill of rights. And I suspect if I checked, there may well have been a small campaign for bill of rights as it does not seem to me to be the type of thing a lot of people would independently see as a priority, but I might be mistaken about that.

Given that there was so much orchestration going on by so many lobby groups in so many areas, it would seem that the Convention in essence ignored it all, made up its own mind about what should be prioritised, and then decided accordingly.

And made the right decision, too. Nice work, IMO.

Michael Nugent · 16-12-2013 11:20AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

The Lobbyists Atheist Ireland lambasted the Constitutional Convention here and elsewhere; including their own site for the outrageous "insult" caused to them and "secular Citizens" everywhere with the Convention prioritising basic human rights for Irish Citizens and political reform Before their own agenda.

That’s an interesting exercise in hyperbole. Let’s unpack it.

We’re not “The Lobbyists Atheist Ireland”. Lobbying is one of the many things that we do.

We didn’t “lambaste” the convention. We criticized them in a strong but balanced way, and we included the statement “Atheist Ireland accepts that different people have different priorities, and we did not expect to automatically have our priorities on the agenda. We understand why people would see Political and Institutional Reform to be central to the Constitution, and we are part of the network that supports ESC Rights.”

We didn’t describe the insult as “outrageous”. You just made that up. We didn’t say that the insult was to “secular citizens everywhere”. I know that you know that we didn’t say that, because you have already acknowledged that on this thread after you made that mistake before.

We didn’t criticize them for “prioritizing basic human rights for all citizens”, and we do not place “basic human rights for Irish citizens” before “our own agenda”. Our own agenda in this context is to promote basic human rights for all Irish citizens. These include the right to freedom of conscience, the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to equality before the law, the right to family and private life and the rights of the child.

These are among the most basic of human rights (more fundamental than ESC Rights), and Ireland is breaching them on a regular basis, as we have been told by the UN Human Rights Committee, the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the Irish Human Rights Commission, and the Ombudsman for Children, among others. Any implied exclusion of these from “basic human rights” just makes tackling the problem that little bit harder.

So feel free to criticize us for what we say and do, but please don’t just criticize your misrepresentation of what we say and do.

Michael Nugent · 16-12-2013 11:33AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

The faulty reasoning behind this was the unsupported claims that a) It had the most support in public meetings and b) Separation of Church State received the most submissions from the public.

They’re not unsupported claims.

The claim that Church and State had most support at public meetings is supported by our Regional Officer attending each of the public meetings, and recording how many people spoke on each topic.

The claim that Church and State had most submissions published on the Convention website is based on counting the number of submissions published on the website.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

These are the numbers published by Atheist Ireland.

190 Separation of Church and State
166 ESC rights
160 Environment
110 Family and Issues of Morality
53 Political and Institutional Reform
32 Bill of Rights

I've gone through the submissions one-by-one and it appears to me that at best someone has miscalculated and inflated the seperation of Church and State figures and at worst has intentionally tried to mislead.

It's good to see you moving away from your earlier arguments based on Padre Pio miracles, the Loch Ness Monster, gingers being bussed out of the State, and disproving the existence of God.

And you are correct that at best someone has miscalculated and at worst has intentionally tried to mislead. As a charitable person, I will assume that you miscalculated.

Firstly, as a very minor point, your summary includes a figure of 140 for Church and State submissions published after Oct 25. However, your more detailed breakdown puts that figure at 142. When you add the 25 submissions from before Oct 25, that should bring you to 167 instead of 165.

But more importantly, what you appear to have done is calculated only the number of submissions that were submitted to the website using the category "Other". In fairness, it is understandable why you would do that, as that is where the submissions should be categorized on the website.

However, if you also check the submissions that were submitted under the category "Blasphemy", you will find that 24 people made submissions under that website category that are either explicitly in their titles about Separating Church and State (as distinct from being about blasphemy) or else are in their titles about Blasphemy but within the submission refer to both Blasphemy and Separating Church and State.

It seems reasonable to assume that these people saw the category option of "Blasphemy" as being the nearest option to what they were looking for, and thus submitted them under that website category instead of the website category "Other". However, it doesn't actually matter why they mistakenly miscategorised them on the website. They are still submissions about their content, which is Separation of Church and State.

When you add those submissions into your calculations, you should find that the Church and State figure more or less matches the 190 figure that Atheist Ireland posted (I make it one out, but I may be mistaken in that).

As I know from your previous post that you can do that exercise, I assume that you will for the sake of accuracy update the blog that you created in order to publish your figures.

robindch · 16-12-2013 11:42AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

That is what is in the link.

Nope. You've got two lists. Put them into one. Then sort them. Then post the results so other people can verify the figures and verify them against your earlier claims if they wish.

And drop the trivially false misrepresentations of AI or you will be carded for incivility.

Brown Bomber · 16-12-2013 12:23PM

Michael Nugent wrote: »

They’re not unsupported claims.

The claim that Church and State had most support at public meetings is supported by our Regional Officer attending each of the public meetings, and recording how many people spoke on each topic.

The claim that Church and State had most submissions published on the Convention website is based on counting the number of submissions published on the website.

It's good to see you moving away from your earlier arguments based on Padre Pio miracles, the Loch Ness Monster, gingers being bussed out of the State, and disproving the existence of God.

And you are correct that at best someone has miscalculated and at worst has intentionally tried to mislead. As a charitable person, I will assume that you miscalculated.

Firstly, as a very minor point, your summary includes a figure of 140 for Church and State submissions published after Oct 25. However, your more detailed breakdown puts that figure at 142. When you add the 25 submissions from before Oct 25, that should bring you to 167 instead of 165.

But more importantly, what you appear to have done is calculated only the number of submissions that were submitted to the website using the category "Other". In fairness, it is understandable why you would do that, as that is where the submissions should be categorized on the website.

However, if you also check the submissions that were submitted under the category "Blasphemy", you will find that 24 people made submissions under that website category that are either explicitly in their titles about Separating Church and State (as distinct from being about blasphemy) or else are in their titles about Blasphemy but within the submission refer to both Blasphemy and Separating Church and State.

It seems reasonable to assume that these people saw the category option of "Blasphemy" as being the nearest option to what they were looking for, and thus submitted them under that website category instead of the website category "Other". However, it doesn't actually matter why they mistakenly miscategorised them on the website. They are still submissions about their content, which is Separation of Church and State.

When you add those submissions into your calculations, you should find that the Church and State figure more or less matches the 190 figure that Atheist Ireland posted (I make it one out, but I may be mistaken in that).

As I know from your previous post that you can do that exercise, I assume that you will for the sake of accuracy update the blog that you created in order to publish your figures.

1) Thanks for pointing that out. I had wrongly assumed that everything was covered under "submissions" and the others were sub categories. I will amend when possible
2) Without analysing I can tell you straight off that "Family and Issues of Morality" has considerably more submissions than "Separation of Church & State".
https://www.constitution.ie/Submissions.aspx?cid=50

Brown Bomber · 16-12-2013 12:24PM

robindch wrote: »

Nope. You've got two lists. Put them into one. Then sort them. Then post the results so other people can verify the figures and verify them against your earlier claims if they wish.

And drop the trivially false misrepresentations of AI or you will be carded for incivility.

Could you please just open the link that I provided? As I've said once already this is EXACTLY what I've done.

Michael Nugent · 16-12-2013 12:35PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

1) Thanks for pointing that out. I had wrongly assumed that everything was covered under "submissions" and the others were sub categories. I will amend when possible.

Thanks. As I said, I understand why you would have assumed they would be categorized under "Other"

Brown Bomber wrote: »

2) Without analysing I can tell you straight off that "Family and Issues of Morality" has considerably more submissions than "Separation of Church & State".
https://www.constitution.ie/Submissions.aspx?cid=50

No, that's a different issue.

There are two types of agenda item that the Convention had to discuss. One was a list of specific items that the Government asked them to discuss. That list included both same-sex marriage and blasphemy, as well as other items.

The Convention did not have any discretion about discussing those items. The Convention's discretion only came into play on the final agenda item, which was any other items that they wanted to make recommendations on.

What we are talking about here are submissions for the "AOB" section, not submissions about items which were already on the agenda (and indeed have already been addressed by the Convention.)

For clarity, I am not including all of the submissions about blasphemy as part of the figure for Church and State. I am including only submissions about Church and State that were miscategorized under Blasphemy.

To fairly compare the number of submissions on Same Sex Marriage with the number of submissions on Church and State, you would have to have one or other of the following two scenarios:

Either (a) that both were specifically on the agenda, and the Convention was seeking submissions on how to address them; or (B) that neither were on the agenda, and the Convention was seeking submissions on whether to include them.

Brown Bomber · 16-12-2013 12:38PM

Same sex marriage clearly falls under the broader category of "Family and Issues of Morality". Blasphemy and separation of Church and State are clearly two separate issues.

Michael Nugent · 16-12-2013 12:46PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Same sex marriage clearly falls under the broader category of "Family and Issues of Morality". Blasphemy and separation of Church and State are clearly two separate issues.

That wasn't the point I was making. I was distinguishing between items already on the Convention's agenda (including Same Sex Marriage and Blasphemy) and items that were not on the Convention's agenda (including Family and Issues of Morality and Separation of Church and State).

But if you do want to interrelate the issues (which I do agree is reasonable as part of a different conversation) then Blasphemy is certainly related to Separation of Church and State in any context, and Same Sex Marriage is related to Separation of Church and State in an Irish context. So is Family and Issues of Morality; indeed in Ireland those terms are almost a code phrase for the influence of the Catholic Church on private morality.

Michael Nugent · 16-12-2013 12:52PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Given that there was so much orchestration going on by so many lobby groups in so many areas, it would seem that the Convention in essence ignored it all, made up its own mind about what should be prioritised, and then decided accordingly.

That’s not actually correct.

In March 2013 the ESC Rights Initiative held a seminar in Dublin titled “Pursuing Constitutional Protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - Identifying Allies and Opportunities.”

33 of the Convention delegates are public representatives. The Convention delegations from all parties and groupings in the Dáil were invited to attend this seminar to outline their party position on ESC rights.

During the morning session of the seminar politicians from all political parties, and the Technical Group, committed in varying degrees to support the review of ESC rights as part of the Constitutional Convention process.

Banbh · 16-12-2013 03:06PM

The Constitutional Convention is a crock.

It is comprised of appointees who were then deemed to be representative of the people. It has a 'neutral' chairman appointed by the Government - neutral between what and what is not mentioned. They have been cruising around the country holding public meetings at which people say anything they fancy and then the neutral chairman summarises and moves on.

It's a crock. And it is going to come out with the greatest load of oul cobblers imaginable and then the neutral chairman will be appointed to the Senate.

Constitutional Convention insults secular citizens with 2% vote on Church & State

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