Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

Piliger · 09-01-2014 12:11AM

vibe666 wrote: »

it's almost as if you are suggesting that we should all just keep our mouths shut and have 'faith' that the almighty census is completely infallible and that we should not question its accuracy despite the fact that it bears no resemblance to reality?

I don't know about I Heart Internet but I don't think we are saying that discussion should be shut down. Absolutely not.

What I myself say is that it is the census reflects what people chose for themselves and they are entitled to do so. It is not for you or me to second guess them in terms of their choice.

The census is direct evidence that 6% describe themselves as Atheist. 94% say they are theist. The next task is to try to find out how this breakdown applies to people >18 or people >21 and move on from there.

TheChizler · 09-01-2014 12:21AM

The census is direct evidence that 6% describe themselves as Atheist. 94% say they are theist. The next task is to try to find out how this breakdown applies to people >18 or people >21 and move on from there.

Not exactly, it's direct evidence that a box corresponding to this interpretation of atheist and theist was marked on census forms corresponding to those percentages of people. Presuming they were correctly counted (but I'll accept that particular caveat may be overly pedantic).

alaimacerc · 09-01-2014 12:21AM

Piliger wrote: »

What I myself say is that it is the census reflects what people chose for themselves and they are entitled to do so. It is not for you or me to second guess them in terms of their choice.

Sure it is. Why is it fair game to "second guess" surveys results (that go into considerably more detail and nuance), but not the crude "one thing or the other, tick only one box" of the census?

The census is direct evidence that 6% describe themselves as Atheist. 94% say they are theist.

There's at least two layers making that not direct at all. Firstly, as has been pointed out ten thousands times already, it's the "responsible person" who's being asked, not each individual. Secondly, you're "synthesizing" different things here, as they'd say in Wikipedia. You assume that "Catholic" implies "Christian", and that "Christian" implies "theist". (And likewise for "no belief" and "atheism", as we also have already covered.) It's clear that someone who identifies as a "Catholic" but as someone that doesn't believe in god, is not ticking the "theist" box that you imagine them to be.

The next task is to try to find out how this breakdown applies to people >18 or people >21 and move on from there.

I don't follow. There's an age breakdown already, no?

darjeeling · 09-01-2014 12:22AM

Having looked through the thread, I tend to agree with people who say that the census stats shouldn't be used to try to second guess what people actually think about social issues. The headline 90% Christian or 80+% Catholic figures don't tell us whether people want to allow contraception, divorce, abortion or same-sex relationships, how they think the schools should be run and so on. Past referenda and opinion polling have shown us that.

However, I think the numbers are interesting in that they show us how religious identity is changing over time. And if anyone else finds that interesting too, here are some more numbers - this time for Catholicism and Islam.

Data used in the graphs is in this tabbed text file if anyone wants a look for themselves.

Piliger · 09-01-2014 12:26AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

Sure it is. Why is it fair game to "second guess" surveys results (that go into considerably more detail and nuance), but not the crude "one thing or the other, tick only one box" of the census?

Well the answer to that is obvious. The census is a record of every house in the country, while surveys are guesses.

I don't follow. There's an age breakdown already, no?

Do you have a link to it ? The numbers of people over 18 or over 21 who identify as atheist ? or 'no religion' ?

alaimacerc · 09-01-2014 12:35AM

Piliger wrote: »

Well the answer to that is obvious.

Here we go...

The census is a record of every house in the country, while surveys are guesses.

I think the statistical and psephological distinction between "survey" and "guess" is pretty clear, myself. There seems to be quite the movement on this thread to imply or outright claim that surveys have a sampling error or however large the writer would like to assume they are, and that a single census question has an utterly bombproof interpretation. Despite copious evidence to the contrary in both cases.

Do you have a link to it ? The numbers of people over 18 or over 21 who identify as atheist ? or 'no religion' ?

Hasn't it been referred to in this very thread? Or are you insisting on lumping over 18/20, rather than over 20 (15, 25, etc)?

Piliger · 09-01-2014 12:54AM

I just visited the census site and the info is very limited imho. They don't seem to give data for ages 18 or 21, only 15 and up, and I think heads of households are very likely to assign religion to family members until they are at least 21, right or wrong.

So ... let's look at 25yo and over. There are 3,028,412 people in this category. Now the likelihood is that every person listed in the censor as 'no religion' and hence Atheist is actually an Atheist. When I do a table search for 'no religion' for all nationalities and all ages, I get 256,830. This is 8.48%.

So at the very least, 8.48% of everyone over 25 in Ireland is an Atheist.

Then we can speculate a little. The percentage among people between 18yo and 25yo who are atheist is likely to be far higher than those over 25 if everything I read over the last 5 years is anything to go by. Many sources suggest a rate of at least 20%.

From inspecting the census age profile it would seem a fair estimate to suggest that about 270,000 are between 18 and 25. 20% of that is 54,000 additional Atheists.

That would add up to (256,830 + 54,000) ~310,800 total adult Atheists. That is 310,800 among (3,028,400+270,000) 3,298,400 people aged 18 and over. Giving a rate of 9.42% of all Adults in Ireland are Atheists

After that we can speculate further, as suggested by others here. Some who list themselves as theist are probably Atheist.

But how many that is ........ would appear to me to be appallingly difficult to estimate.My own personal guess would be 5-10%. But then as an Atheists I am biased.

Hotblack Desiato · 09-01-2014 01:06AM

Piliger wrote: »

If they say they are a catholic then they are a catholic as far as stats are concerned.

Same as when they say they can speak Irish, right? I mean, if someone who can at a push speak two words can tick the 'can speak Irish' box, someone who has never been inside a church since their childhood can tick the 'catholic' box too. The real question is what, if anything, of value can we get from this type of census question? It's all very well asking people how many bathrooms they have and how far they have to go to work, etc., but these vague, leading and semi-judgemental questions on language and religion have a hard time justifying the square centimetres they take up, imho.

alaimacerc · 09-01-2014 01:07AM

Piliger wrote: »

I just visited the census site and the info is very limited imho. They don't seem to give data for ages 18 or 21, only 15 and up, and I think heads of households are very likely to assign religion to family members until they are at least 21, right or wrong.

I just did too, and am now confused. If the CSO only publishes the data "lumped" into 0-14, 15-24, 25-34, etc, where did the data above that splits it into 0-4, 5-10, etc, come from? (i.e. the file irish_census_religion_age_group_data.txt). Can someone clarify if these are fibily bono? I can crunch that data some, but I don't want to waste my time if it's makey-uppy.

After that we can speculate further, as suggested by others here. Some who list themselves as theist are probably Atheist.

But how many that is ........ would appear to me to be appallingly difficult to estimate.My own personal guess would be 5-10%. But then as an Atheists I am biased.

As I mentioned, the bishops are saying it's a little over 10% of the self-described Catholics. That'd be something like 8.484% of the population of "Catholic atheists" alone. (Ignoring any age breakdown effects for the time being.)

darjeeling · 09-01-2014 01:22AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

I just did too, and am now confused. If the CSO only publishes the data "lumped" into 0-14, 15-24, 25-34, etc, where did the data above that splits it into 0-4, 5-10, etc, come from? (i.e. the file irish_census_religion_age_group_data.txt). Can someone clarify if these are fibily bono? I can crunch that data some, but I don't want to waste my time if it's makey-uppy.

As I mentioned, the bishops are saying it's a little over 10% of the self-described Catholics. That'd be something like 8.484% of the population of "Catholic atheists" alone. (Ignoring any age breakdown effects for the time being.)

I collated the numbers from the CSO website around a year ago. If you like, you can find the original numbers at the following links:

1991 religion x age
2002 religion x age
2006 religion x age
2011 religion x age

There didn't seem to be any religion data for 1996, which is why the '96 census doesn't feature in any of the graphs I've posted. Rooting around on the CSO website gives lots of other views of the data, presented in conjunction with other census data on location, education etc.

.

alaimacerc · 09-01-2014 01:56AM

darjeeling wrote: »

I collated the numbers from the CSO website around a year ago. If you like, you can find the original numbers at the following links:

Thank you! Your collation is great, and I didn't mean to sound skeptical, just confused. I don't really understand why the other page I was looking at (that's much more directly accessible by search and site nav) breaks it down differently (i.e., less). There you go, Piliger, if you're happy with excluding all under-20s (rather than under 18 or under 21), that's the data you wanted right there.

alaimacerc · 09-01-2014 02:16AM

Ok, so by the expedient of importing into Google Docs, tossing the columns less than 20, summing the rows, and dividing the "no religion" by the grand totals, I get the following percentages:

1991: 2.25%
2002: 4.04%
2006: 5.00%
2011: 6.60%

So, still fewer "no religion" atheists than "Catholic atheists", we can say with a fairly high margin for error and degree of statistical confidence.

Piliger · 09-01-2014 02:38AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

Ok, so by the expedient of importing into Google Docs, tossing the columns less than 20, summing the rows, and dividing the "no religion" by the grand totals, I get the following percentages:

1991: 2.25%
2002: 4.04%
2006: 5.00%
2011: 6.60%

So, still fewer "no religion" atheists than "Catholic atheists", we can say with a fairly high margin for error and degree of statistical confidence.

My estimate of 9.42% stands up better than these numbers.

alaimacerc · 09-01-2014 05:30AM

Piliger wrote: »

My estimate of 9.42% stands up better than these numbers.

Stands up to what? Against what are you comparing it?

You're working from "lumped" data, where I'm directly totally the by-five-year-intervals breakdown. You're assuming 20% "no religion" for one segment, whereas no self-reported rate is as high as 10% (in fact, 25-29 is higher than 20-24). You can't just "mix and match" self-reported census data with other estimates made on a different basis. That may be including people reported as "Catholic" (or other religious groups) in the census, while expressing no belief in god when asked that directly (the incongruity of which is the entire premise of this thread, pretty much). You appear to have an incorrect subtotal for "no religion" in the 25+ groups (those sum to 191752 in the data I have, with the 20+ total being 219372; indeed, the total for all ages is 269811, so arriving at 300k+ for just 18+ can't possibly be correct).

Separately from all concerns about the numbers and estimates, as I've said before, I think it's a mistake to equate "no religion" and "atheist". It's likely not all "no religion" respondents would identify as atheist; it's clearly established that considerable numbers of self-reported "Catholics" are, in belief terms, atheists.

expectationlost · 09-01-2014 06:22AM

great graphs darjeeling shows when you have agency to make your own choice then a lot less choose religion, now we have to account for 'getting into school catholics', another thing brown bomber will deny all knowledge ofand deny the pernicious domination of Ireland by the Catholic church.

vibe666 · 09-01-2014 09:13AM

Piliger wrote: »

I don't know about I Heart Internet but I don't think we are saying that discussion should be shut down. Absolutely not

sorry, that's not what I meant at all, I meant that *some* people in the thread are acting like the census data is completely infallible and 100% correct for every citizen in ireland, when there is a lot of room for interpretation and/or misrepresentation.

it's like having a question on the form of are you A: Black or B: White with no other options and then making decisions for the entire country based purely on that data when there is a lot of room for options between A & B.

expectationlost wrote: »

great graphs darjeeling shows when you have agency to make your own choice then a lot less choose religion, now we have to account for 'getting into school catholics', another thing brown bomber will deny all knowledge ofand deny the pernicious domination of Ireland by the Catholic church.

don't forget the "want to have nice church wedding photo's" catholics or the "want to be buried next to their relatives" catholics. I'm sure there are more.

my wife was quite insistent on filling it in as "catholic" for herself, despite us having the conversation about her being honest on the form as she has zero belief in god, never goes to church except for weddings (except our own, which she specifically didn't want as I already mentioned), funerals etc; hasn't been to confession in over 20 years and actively hates all things church and/or priest related as they make her skin crawl (her words).

eventually, her final response before completing the form was "but i'm still a catholic". so despite having no belief in god at all, or the catholic church and quite a lot of hatred towards them from several nasty childhood events within her family she still identifies as a catholic in her own eyes and i'm in my own experience she's far from the only one.

our 2 year old son has not been (and will not be) baptised and neither will our 1 month old daughter for all of the above reasons and we have both agreed that it's going to stay that way unless they choose to themselves when they are old enough, which i have no problem at all with if that's what they want.

we had talked about baptism purely from a "getting into schools perspective" but i wasn't at all comfortable with the idea and in the end, due to moving to a different area we now have access (which we didn't previously) to more than one ET school, so we didn't need to.

ironically enough, my wife now understands much more the importance of the separation of church and state, particularly in regards to removing church influence from schools to give all children of all faiths equal access to a good education nationwide, yet if they did another census tomorrow, she will still mark catholic on the form, or any other form she fills out, as she did in the hospital when we had both our children which lead to a very weird conversation with a priest who came to have a chat to us about "god's plan" after the first baby was born, which led to a very awkward silence when I told him we didn't believe in god.

I Heart Internet · 09-01-2014 11:30AM

vibe666 wrote: »

sorry, that's not what I meant at all, I meant that *some* people in the thread are acting like the census data is completely infallible and 100% correct for every citizen in ireland, when there is a lot of room for interpretation and/or misrepresentation.

The census results are not infallible and there will always be countless anecdotes of people's "answers" being filled in incorrectly by "heads of households", just as there will be people who, for whatever reason, aren't included in the census (on holidays, etc). But the census results are the best we have to go on in terms of people's view of their own religious identification. The beauty of a census is that it's (in theory) supposed to cover everyone in the state - so irregularities tend to even out and there is then broad agreement that the census results are solid.

What a lot of people are indulging in here is suggesting that some/many/most of those who ticked the catholic box are "bad catholics" or "unbelieving catholics" or "don't follow all the RCC's rules so can't be called catholics." That's quite a different matter. People's self identification of themselves and, indeed, their aspirations for themselves is different to the details of their religious adherence. It always surprises me that some atheists/secularists would have an awful lot in common with die-hard traditionalist catholics - essentially they are both saying, "You can't be an a la carte catholic. You must believe all or nothing and practice accordingly. Otherwise you can't tell people you're a catholic." Lighten up people!

vibe666 wrote: »

a quick spot check of boards.ie shows 23 people currently browsing this forum and only 4 browsing the christianity forum, so that doesn't tally with the census figures, it should surely at least be the other way around if the census was accurate and less than1% of irish people were atheists?

Dear me! You seem to be suggesting that the goings-on on a website between 27 people is somehow a reliable indicator of people's views. That it's somehow comparable to a national census.

I really don't know what to say to that...

Mark Hamill · 09-01-2014 12:48PM

Piliger wrote: »

It is for the individual to say what they are. I don't want anyone telling me what kind of atheist I am.

You dont get that choice. It's not for individuals to say what they are, what they are is simply whatever label best describes the beliefs and actions they have and do. Labels exist outside your own head, if you like a label then you must change to suit it, you can't change it to suit you.

Mark Hamill · 09-01-2014 12:51PM

darjeeling wrote: »

Having looked through the thread, I tend to agree with people who say that the census stats shouldn't be used to try to second guess what people actually think about social issues.

I think its less of a case of one side using the census to second guess what people actually think about social issues, and more of a case of one side pointing out that you can't use the census to make any kind of guess what people actually think about social issues.

CramCycle · 09-01-2014 01:06PM

Piliger wrote: »

You say "It has been pointed out ..." well I say BS to that. It is for the individual to say what they are. I don't want anyone telling me what kind of atheist I am. It is arrogant and presumptuous to assign people's religious views to others. It is actually ironic, considering the earlier posts in this thread about the rcc counting people who don't want to be counted .... and now you are saying it is the rcc's prerogative to decide if a person is a proper catholic ?

Well it is the RCCs perogative to say wether a person is a proper roman catholic, not sure about all the different brands/types.

If they say they are a catholic then they are a catholic as far as stats are concerned. People should get a grip on that and not make subjective claims based on personal anecdotal experience.

The anecdotes are there just to point out that the hard number the Census provides is not a hard number, it might be close, it might not but to claim it is absolute is ridiculous considering the other viable issues, such as people on holidays etc.

Piliger wrote: »

The census is direct evidence that 6% describe themselves as Atheist. 94% say they are theist. The next task is to try to find out how this breakdown applies to people >18 or people >21 and move on from there.

Can someone clarify is Athiest an option, I think I signed off as whatever the Bajoran religion was I think.

I Heart Internet wrote: »

What a lot of people are indulging in here is suggesting that some/many/most of those who ticked the catholic box are "bad catholics" or "unbelieving catholics" or "don't follow all the RCC's rules so can't be called catholics." That's quite a different matter. People's self identification of themselves and, indeed, their aspirations for themselves is different to the details of their religious adherence. It always surprises me that some atheists/secularists would have an awful lot in common with die-hard traditionalist catholics - essentially they are both saying, "You can't be an a la carte catholic. You must believe all or nothing and practice accordingly. Otherwise you can't tell people you're a catholic." Lighten up people!

I don't like being called an athiest, it is not how I would ever describe myself, in fact I prefer to leave religion or no religion out as a description issue in conversation unless it is an underling in work informing me they won't be in due to a religious holiday, and even then, if they just take a day without informing me why, I'd be happier still. Does not change the fact that the label accurately describes me in a way, the same way Christian describes alot of people who ticked roman catholic on the census.

Dear me! You seem to be suggesting that the goings-on on a website between 27 people is somehow a reliable indicator of people's views. That it's somehow comparable to a national census

I would point out that there are obvious issues with the national census that a conversation between 27 people on a website has shown, if not indicated to quite strongly. Does not mean I would take the opinions of these 26 others over the national census in regards to the average distance to travel to work or school.

robindch · 09-01-2014 01:22PM

Piliger wrote: »

[...] it is the census reflects what people chose for themselves and they are entitled to do so. It is not for you or me to second guess them in terms of their choice. [...]

It's a bit like saying that 90% of the population are members of their local gym. But while the gym is happy to agree with that inflated assessment, it turns out that most people don't pay their membership fees, don't agree with what goes on there and generally avoid the place.

I Heart Internet · 09-01-2014 01:28PM

Mark Hamill wrote: »

You dont get that choice. It's not for individuals to say what they are, what they are is simply whatever label best describes the beliefs and actions they have and do. Labels exist outside your own head, if you like a label then you must change to suit it, you can't change it to suit you.

Sounds very big-brother to me. "It doesn't matter what you say or call yourself, you have been deemed by our monitoring of you to be an X."

flutered · 09-01-2014 01:34PM

Corkfeen wrote: »

BB, there's no evidence he did it to 'appease' anyone, McAleese didn't mention Christianity in her speeches either so perhaps they simply want to be as inclusive as possible? I wouldn't have cared if he had mentioned Christianity in the speech, doubt many would. People from this forum were primarily pointing out the absurd reaction to him not doing so.

As president he chose to address the nation, not just Christians. He is entitled to do this.

what about the so called spirit of christmas, the last census claimed that there are quite a number of christians in ireland, surely he could have mentioned the word christmas even in passing, are not 90% of the population entitled to that.

joseph brand · 09-01-2014 01:35PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

What else? Oh yeah, according to our own census we are as a nation over 90% Christian.

I would expect this from a christian who was new to this forum, but I'm sure that you've been here quite a few times. It has been explained ad nauseam, just like the difference between atheism and agnosticism. /groan

So now I'm wondering if this isn't just a stick in a hornets nest?

magicbastarder · 09-01-2014 01:39PM

i think we can safely say that for the purposes of the census, the question actually means 'do you consider yourself catholic in theory, whether or not you fail miserably to match that in practice?'

vibe666 · 09-01-2014 01:40PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

so irregularities tend to even out and there is then broad agreement that the census results are solid.

except that there isn't broad agreement, or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I Heart Internet wrote: »

What a lot of people are indulging in here is suggesting that some/many/most of those who ticked the catholic box are "bad catholics" or "unbelieving catholics" or "don't follow all the RCC's rules so can't be called catholics." That's quite a different matter. People's self identification of themselves and, indeed, their aspirations for themselves is different to the details of their religious adherence.

pretty sure it's the church that dictates who qualifies as a catholic and who doesn't, but the problem is that there are very clear definitions within church doctrine that have already been pointed out qualify someone as catholic. unfortunately, the census doesn't ask the question in such a way as to distinguish between the most faithful catholic in the country and the people like my wife who don't believe in ANY catholic doctrine or even believe in god, but STILL identify themselves as catholic, or account for the people who genuinely aren't catholic but were put down on the census as catholic by whoever filled out the form or any of the other potential discrepancies that have been mentioned.

and you know what, all of that is fine UNTIL people and the church start using those figures to overinflate their numbers to push the catholic agenda (and if there's an atheist agenda and a gay agenda then i think it's fair to call it a catholic agenda) and claim that Ireland is a 90% christian country and push for national policies favouring catholics based on those figures, then I have a problem with it, particularly when non-religious 'cultural' catholics (and even non-catholics) have to do ridiculous things like getting their kids baptised just to get into a decent school, when they otherwise would not.

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Dear me! You seem to be suggesting that the goings-on on a website between 27 people is somehow a reliable indicator of people's views. That it's somehow comparable to a national census.

no, I'm saying that the most popular web forum in Ireland always has many many more people browsing the Atheism forum than the Christianity forum (28 here to 8 there currently) so either we are having much more interesting dicussions in here, or Atheism in Ireland is a lot more popular (at least amongst web users) here than Christianity.

who knows, maybe they're just here for the biscuits.

joseph brand · 09-01-2014 01:41PM

robindch wrote: »

That figure is unlikely to reflect reality in any meaningful sense for a range of reasons including:
Parents filling out census forms for kids and putting down their own religious beliefs, not any religious beliefs actually held by the child (if any).

People claiming a religious belief to help maintain domestic tranquility

People claiming a religious belief for reasons of culture or tradition, rather than supernatural reasons

People claiming a religious belief, when their beliefs about the religion are mildly or substantially incorrect

When you add up the above, I think the figure of ~90% christian is likely to decline drastically -- IMHO, probably to less than 50%, and quite possibly closer to 10% or less especially on account of the last reason.

The current inflated figures for christian belief are like so much else in christian belief - nothing more than a pious, self-interested fiction.

I have an idea Robin. Would it be convenient to have a sticky, where things like a) the census figures and b) the differences between atheism and agnosticism, could be located?

Next time someone brings it up, they could be sent a link to the sticky. It might prevent posters having to repeat themselves over and over and over and over . . . .

robindch · 09-01-2014 01:42PM

magicbastarder wrote: »

[...] the question actually means 'do you consider yourself catholic in theory, whether or not you fail miserably to match that in practice?'

/thread

magicbastarder · 09-01-2014 01:46PM

vibe666 wrote: »

unfortunately, the census doesn't ask the question in such a way as to distinguish between the most faithful catholic in the country and the people like my wife who don't believe in ANY catholic doctrine or even believe in god, but STILL identify themselves as catholic

to be fair, the census should not ask that question either. because it's incredibly subjective, especially when asking someone to rate their level of religiosity.
the census should be used as an input for government policy as one of its primary uses, and what peoples' religion is should not have any great impact on government policy; even if 99% self identified as catholic, this should not inform state thinking on church sponsorship of the primary school system.

CramCycle · 09-01-2014 01:49PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Sounds very big-brother to me. "It doesn't matter what you say or call yourself, you have been deemed by our monitoring of you to be an X."

Hardly, if I believe in a diety of any form, I can call myself athiest but this would be a lie, and to put it down on a census is a lie. If I believe in Christ as a Diety and follow/worship him but do not follow/obey in the teachings of the Catholic Church, then I can call myself Catholic but that would be a lie, I would be a Christian. If I don't believe in any Diety, I can call myself a Catholic, but that would be a lie, I am an Athiest.

Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

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