Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

Cabaal · 10-01-2014 05:31PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

No one should have to send their child to a school whose ethos or practices they don't share or they disagree with (unless they actually don't mind that and want to send them anyway - again, choice). But neither should religious communities be forbidden from educating their children, as many would like to see here.

So your solution to tax payer funded schools having catholic ethos resulting in no choice for non Catholics is?

1. Tax payer should pay to build more schools in every town and country up and down the country
2. The existing government run schools should have no religious ethos and parents should actually be involved in their kids religious education?
3. Secret option number three?

There's is no alternative education for the vast majority of non-catholic people already setup locally especially in rural area's.

There is however an alternative religious education system setup in every town and locality up and down the country, its called mass.

Parents should bring their kids to it if they want their kids thought about jebus and god.

After all the parents agreed with the church to raise their kids in the faith, they didn't agree to let the tax payer pay others to raise their kids in the catholic faith at the expensive of all other non-Catholics.

eyescreamcone · 10-01-2014 05:33PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

But neither should religious communities be forbidden from educating their children, as many would like to see here.

I've no problem with any group of fairytale-ists telling their offspring about their warped view of the universe either.

However, my problem is when the taxpayer has to cough up to pay for this nonsense to be taught by qualified teachers, whose time would be better spent teaching real subjects.

Schools should be places where facts are taught.
Maybe the bible could be introduced as a piece of fictional literature.

But if any cult/religious group wish to teach their children about the "magic", then I suggest that they do so at their own expense and not from the public purse.

Brian Shanahan · 10-01-2014 05:36PM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

But how can it be exact when posters here have stated that the know people have ticked a box that does not apply?

One simply cannot state that a form filled out by one person on behalf of an entire household which is not checked for accuracy is exact.

Do you imagine many people whose status in Ireland is illegal fill out the census?
Would you say the census is a exact reflection of how many 'illegals' there are?

I seem to recall at the time of the census there was thread after thread of people declaring they would not fill it out. If just one household failed to - it is not an exact record.

And to add to the inaccuracy I can count one case of a person being entered twice, he filled himself out in Limerick, his mother filled him out back home; and at least ten cases of people being filled out by others, where there were differences between what was entered into the census and reality.

Corkfeen · 10-01-2014 05:40PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I think you're trying to suggest that I believe in a one-size-fits all education, or that I believe that everyone should receive a catholic education. You couldn't be more wrong. I believe in choice for everyone when it comes to educating their children.

No one should have to send their child to a school whose ethos or practices they don't share or they disagree with (unless they actually don't mind that and want to send them anyway - again, choice). But neither should religious communities be forbidden from educating their children, as many would like to see here.

Is there something particularly offensive about an ethos that doesn't prioritise a specific religion? Can you point out any country that has a majority of state schools being of a specific religion? They are for all intents and purposes state schools, they follow a syllabus devised entirely by the state and are funded by the state.

However a huge amount of time is wasted on matters such as Communions and Confirmations which could easily be organised in a Sunday school situation. Parents of children who aren't baptised are discriminated against in terms of being accepted into schools. This is not a remotely acceptable situation.

smacl · 10-01-2014 05:46PM

eyescreamcone wrote: »

Schools should be places where facts are taught.

That is a bit narrow IMHO. Currently, in her ET primary school, my youngest learns things such as art, music, yoga and mindfulness alongside the three Rs. If you have a tradition within a community that the community wants to pass on to their kids, I don't think it is unreasonable to include it in their formal education.

While I personally would rather not see my kids wasting time with religious study, and feel ripped off in having to fund the RCC to spread its dogma, if that is what some people want, so be it. As per the opening post, the question is how many people actually want this? I suspect the number is a small fraction of the census count for Catholics, that schools with a RCC ethos are grossly over represented, and that we need to achieve a balance.

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 06:55PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

But neither should religious communities be forbidden from educating their children, as many would like to see here.

Straw man much?

Mark Hamill · 10-01-2014 07:03PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

No one should have to send their child to a school whose ethos or practices they don't share or they disagree with (unless they actually don't mind that and want to send them anyway - again, choice). But neither should religious communities be forbidden from educating their children, as many would like to see here.

The obvious solution to this is to have no ethos in schools, and leave people to inflict whatever ethos they like on their kids in their own homes or communities.

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 07:11PM

Penncil Dick wrote: »

In fairness, the position the Catholic Church takes is that once you're baptised, you're always a Catholic regardless of what you do or believe.

This came up before, and while I'm not 100%, I think the "indelible effect" of baptism isn't quite that. (Trinitarian) baptism is common to (almost) all Christians, and reciprocally recognised as such -- so you can be baptised in a RCC and end up as CoI, or vice versa (in theory). You're not "officially" a Catholic unless you're "in communion with the pope", which surely requires that you've been both confirmed and taken communion. So that is reversible by excommunication -- which could happen for any of the many "not thinking or acting anything like a Catholic" mentioned in this thread... just in practice, doesn't. Also, it used to be voluntarily reversible in canon law -- they just happened to change that.

There's always having or providing an abortion, or punching the pope, if you're really stuck for a means to "leave". Those seem a little strong, though (unless you already have some other good reason to do any of those things).

That's part of the problem, they don't want to lose numbers because then they have less power.

Very much so, yes.

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 07:15PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Not your fault smacl, but this discussion is just going around in circles.

Probably because some people insist on repeatedly grabbing hold of the steering wheel, and tugging violently to the right.

Bannasidhe · 10-01-2014 07:21PM

alaimacerc wrote: »

Probably because some people insist on repeatedly grabbing hold of the steering wheel, and tugging violently to the right.

While screaming 'we are being persecuted' all 90% of them apparently...

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 07:23PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

I'm sorry I can't find a link to the results but my understanding that these surveys (there was maybe 10-20 of them in areas that were perceived to be particularly problematic...e.g. large towns with e.g. 5 RCC national schools) shoawed a) a startling degree of apathy (only a minortiy actually completed them

And there is of course an article in the constitution that all apathy and indifference must be construed in favour of the Culturally Catholic Status Quo. Silly me for forgetting that one.

b) of those who did complete them, a reasonable (but not overwhelming) desire for change

And this is "problematic" how? How did we get from "we're the overwhelming majority, bow down!" to "well, we're only a bit in the minority, give over already"?

c) Of those that wanted new patrons in local schools they strongly favoured Educate Together - who would see to have done a very good job and are well regarded.

And by some wild coincidence, are the most secular patron body. (Or to those Breaking Bad Secularists who insist that there's no such thing, at the very least the closest to strictly secular.) How is this somehow evidence against a huge unmet desire for something other than Catholic Maths, Catholic Irish, Catholic Biology for non-Catholic and "not very Catholic" kids?

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 07:49PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Absolutely. A census is a best shot at getting nationwide, "complete" data. Some errors on either side (+ and -) can cancel out but anyone who uses the data (should) know that it's not an exact science. It's the best that can be done (without excessive cost).

Quite plainly, we're not looking at "some errors on either side that can cancel out". We're looking at numbers that are blatantly skewed counterfactually just one way. There's been copious evidence presented on this thread to support that, utterly uncontroverted. Instead we just get you and BB mock-wringing-your-hands and saying "ah, but the census is the census, what can we do"? Translation: "it's systematically biased in just the way we like, so we'll both promote it ahead of other data, and resist any future efforts to get any better data".

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 07:58PM

GarIT wrote: »

I would highly doubt it is as wrong as people claim though, what are the chances that each time there was an error it was always a religious person filling in a religion for everyone else. There are 84% Catholics in this country, just not devout or practising.

You mean, people like the Catholic Bishops "claiming" that 10% of the "Catholics" are actually atheists?

I'll grant you it's not necessarily a job that numeracy, modesty of presentation, or firm grasp of the facts aren't necessarily key qualifiers for, but it doesn't seem like something they'd have a vest[ment]ed interest in exaggerating, does it?

In the cafeteria of Catholicism, it seems pretty clear to me that there's not just some people eating lightly, there are plenty brown-bagging it, if not just plain fasting.

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 08:19PM

Benny_Cake wrote: »

Only if you accept that the use of artificial contraception means that someone is no longer a Catholic, which is not a position that the Catholic Church takes. Whether they are a good Catholic or not is an entirely different question.

"Bad Catholic" (as well as sounding like a Farrelly Brothers movie waiting to happen) can easily shade into "no longer a Catholic". You can in theory be excommunicated for using contraception. You can certainly be excommunicated for sufficiently loudly advocating its use, and certainly many lower rungs of the hierarchy have found themselves being disciplined for such things. That it doesn't happen en mass routinely is simply because the church prefers the Orson Card approach: "We don't need to throw all the gays into prison; just a handful, pour encourager autres." Otherwise, they'd be creating a membership wasteland, and calling it pure.

A census is always going to be a blunt instrument. Arguing over the figures misses the point - the issue to address is what those figures will be used for. If the education system needs to be reformed, then it shouldn't matter whether this country is 84% Catholic or 5% Catholic - it should be reformed anyway.

Indeed. I don't think you need to be a thundering Marxist to think that having all taxpayers pay for school buildings, and pay for the teachers to teach in them, then calling it "purely private and a matter for religious communities" was a crazy way to run an education system.

That's the trouble with the sorts of statements that got this thread started. "84% of the country are Catholics/90% are Christians/94% are theists therefore [monoculturalists theocratic argument du jour]". They're bad numbers, and they're bad arguments. Which of the two is the worse isn't something that I plan of being massively detained by.

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 08:31PM

weisses wrote: »

So that's a No then

... no, it wasn't. Not only was it very manifestly not what I said, you didn't even ask a "yes/no" question. I realize you're not paying any attention to what I'm saying, but shouldn't you at least be trying to pay some to what you're saying?

Figures from the census are used widely, if anybody thinks they are way off then you need to come up with other accepted figures that counter what is in the census.

And we have. Repeatedly. If they haven't made it into the category of "accepted or even acknowledged by you", that's just itself strong evidence of some people existing in a bubble of confirmation bias and sheer denial of the facts.

Piliger · 10-01-2014 09:18PM

Is the Atheist Ireland group putting together any kind of submission to the census people on better questions ? I also think people who are dissatisfied with the way it is should write to them about it (me included) by snail mail. We need to be heard and not amongst ourselves.

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 10:27PM

GarIT wrote: »

I would say the opposite, I think the census is exact but the measurement it gives is not devout Christians but a combination of devout Christians, people that do or don't practice the religion, people who think they are Christian because their parents were etc.

Or who don't think they're Christian, but whose parents are filling in the form and think they bloody well ought to be. Though rather, Catholic, CoI, etc, which is what the census directly asks. I'll bet you money there's significant numbers who'd answer "yes" to a specific Christian denomination, but "no" to "Christian. Or who just hate Rangers/the English/Shane Ross/etc.

To say that it's not an inexact count, but that it's an exact count of something meaningless is the sort of pointless sub-Jesuitical distinction that provides the intellectual landfill of John Waters columns.

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 10:31PM

robindch wrote: »

You should read some of the posts in this thread sometime!

That might impede his capacity to write some of the posts in this thread, given the apparent tactic of "ignore what anyone else is saying, and keep saying the same aul' stuff."

weisses · 10-01-2014 10:52PM

alaimacerc wrote: »

... no, it wasn't. Not only was it very manifestly not what I said, you didn't even ask a "yes/no" question. I realize you're not paying any attention to what I'm saying, but shouldn't you at least be trying to pay some to what you're saying?

And we have. Repeatedly. If they haven't made it into the category of "accepted or even acknowledged by you", that's just itself strong evidence of some people existing in a bubble of confirmation bias and sheer denial of the facts.

So what's the official figure regarding the percentage of christians in Ireland ? Link to relevant info will do

Piliger · 10-01-2014 10:58PM

GarIT wrote: »

I would say the opposite, I think the census is exact but the measurement it gives is not devout Christians but a combination of devout Christians, people that do or don't practice the religion, people who think they are Christian because their parents were etc.

And are you saying that that behaviour is limited to christians ?

weisses · 10-01-2014 11:04PM

robindch wrote: »

There's a lot of surveys about from which it's possible to gain a fairly accurate picture of the precariousness of catholic belief.

Two minutes with google shows this mostly-pointless mostly-political poll from the ACP which showed that 75% of people who claim to be catholic disagree with the church's dogma on gay men having sex. Faith Survey quotes an IT poll which shows that only 26% of people who claim to be catholic believe in transubstantiation, one of the most important dogmas of the RCC. Irish Central quotes another IT poll which shows that 45 per cent do not believe in hell, 18 per cent do not believe that God created man and a truly confused 7% don't believe in whatever god they happen to believe other catholics believe. A Gallup Poll claims that in 2011, 44% of the country are "not religious".

Given these figures, claiming that 90% of the country are catholic/christian/whatever is -- as above -- flat out wrong.

90 per cent of the poll described themselves as Catholic and only 2 per cent Protestant.

from one of your linkies

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 11:14PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I am quite familiar with conspiracy theories

Ooooooohboy I'll bet you are, all right.

and that is all the challenge to the census amounts to, a conspiracy theory; and not a very good one.

Oh, good grief. Looks to me like you're the person seeing a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy here. A conspiracy that ascribes either massive incompetence or watertight collusion of every polling organisation, and in which the bleedin' bishops are in cahoots with the mass media and Sinister Secular Forces to produce false reports (in professionally carried-out in-depth surveys, for crying out loud!) of large numbers of "Catholics" with no detectable Catholic belief or practice.

1) Alleged wide-scale fraud.

Not alleged. At all.

2) Alleged mass-indoctrination

You mean like the documented indoctrination that not only occurs in 95% of state-sector schools, but that people such as yourself and IHtI in this thread have maintained is their inherent legal and religious right to maintain indefinitely? (That it's not very successful indoctrination by any sensible measure is another matter entirely.)

3) Cherry-Picking evidence that best suits the agenda

Massive exercise in projection, there. You're the person insisting that the single question asked in the census is the gold standard for all matters of belief and religious practice, and that other sources, that go into considerably more specific detail, are to be trivialised and dismissed out of hand.

4) Ignoring the best available evidence when it doesn't fit in with the conspiracy.

You real need to look in the mirror, here. Especially when your only argument is to keep yell "Census! Best!" (when plainly it isn't) and that everyone else is "ignoring" it (which even more plainly they're not).

5) Hidden forces at play.

And by "hidden" you presumably meant to type "well-documented, well-understood, and utterly in plain sight"?

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 11:19PM

weisses wrote: »

So what's the official figure regarding the percentage of christians in Ireland ? Link to relevant info will do

Why would such a thing exist? It's not like we have state-registration of religion so you can tithe through the tax system, say. (If we did, rates of "denominational confession" would go from 94% to about 0.094% before you could say "coping classes, where's our bailout, I'll go to jail before I pay this monstrous imposition".)

I assume this isn't in any way a sincere question of any sort, but another exercise in "census! official! everything else! crap!"

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 11:22PM

GarIT wrote: »

I don't have figures on it but based on contraception use I would say it is likely there is less than 5% Catholics in Ireland.

And based on the Sermon on the Mount and the Parable of the Good Samaritan, your guess would be what? Dangerous line of thinking you're opening up here!

weisses · 10-01-2014 11:27PM

alaimacerc wrote: »

Why would such a thing exist? It's not like we have state-registration of religion so you can tithe through the tax system, say. (If we did, rates of "denominational confession" would go from 94% to about 0.094% before you could say "coping classes, where's our bailout, I'll go to jail before I pay this monstrous imposition".)

I assume this isn't in any way a sincere question of any sort, but another exercise in "census! official! everything else! crap!"

Nope not at all ... If you think the census is inaccurate then at least provide us with the information/figures that you consider accurate.

Your opinion doesn't matter

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 11:38PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

This thread started off about the % of christians in Ireland. Having decided that the census doesn't really do it for them, most contributors have fallen back on the tired arguments that boil down to, "we want to take control of your schools. Your constitutional rights to freedom of religion mean nothing to us, we want your schools." North Korea hear we come.

That "strawman up" to someplace faintly near in your strained imagination, is what you're saying. Try on for size something more on the lines of "we'd like somewhat fewer schools that are built by the state, staffed by the state, and given an infrastructure by the state to be declared to be 'our schools, ours by legal right, ours by freedom of religion, ours forever, get your grubby socialist hands off them, we'll run them however we damn well like, bwah-ha-hah!' by a theocratic minority pretending to speak for 84% of the population.' That seem somewhat more reasonable? Wait, let me rephrase that. That sound like it'd seem somewhat more reasonable most places outside your head?

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 11:46PM

weisses wrote: »

Nope not at all ... If you think the census is inaccurate then at least provide us with the information/figures that you consider accurate.

Try reading the thread. Numerous opinion surveys have been provided that provide detailed evidence for prevalence levels of "self-reported Catholics that don't believe in anything Catholic". They're good enough for the bishops -- why not you? (Fortunately I don't think the bishops have declared them to be any of the many thousands of impossible things you have to believe before breakfast, so it's not another Cafeteria sin of omission if you don't. Just... a little odd.)

Your opinion doesn't matter

Delightful.

On the face of it, it matters a whole lot more than yours does, since mine generally endeavours to take account of the available facts.

weisses · 10-01-2014 11:53PM

alaimacerc wrote: »

Try reading the thread. Numerous opinion surveys have been provided that provide detailed evidence for prevalence levels of "self-reported Catholics that don't believe in anything Catholic". They're good enough for the bishops -- why not you? (Fortunately I don't think the bishops have declared them to be any of the many thousands of impossible things you have to believe before breakfast, so it's not another Cafeteria sin of omission if you don't. Just... a little odd.)

I did ... Couldn't find anything more reliable then the census other then opinions and other waffle ... You seem to know where the more reliable info is ... can you point out where ?

alaimacerc wrote: »

Delightful.

On the face of it, it matters a whole lot more than yours does, since mine generally endeavours to take account of the available facts.

What facts ?

Im looking for facts from you regarding the census, but so far its only ill informed opinions your blurring out

alaimacerc · 10-01-2014 11:57PM

ninja900 wrote: »

Yet we still have posters coming on here and typing about the existence of 'choice' with a straight face.

I think you're missing the point here. The people cheerleading ET and (at least half-heartedly) VEC schools aren't making an argument from complacency at all: they're saying "praise the multidenominational supernatural being of choice (or non-existence), give us more of those, and fewer of the priest-ridden, Holy Days of Obligation, state-funded, bishop-owned malarkey!"

Saying "no secular schools in Ireland" is depressing because it sounds like a letting-best-be-the-enemy-of-good argument. ET schools not rigorously religion-free enough, let's scrap those, and waste another couple of decades building up some more ideologically pure cadre of schools instead!

Lack of sufficient choice is a documented reality. And it's people like IHtI standing on what they imagine to be their "religious and legal rights" that are precisely the problem, and those through acquiescence or apathy giving them comfort. The position they're arguing from would be more accurately described as one of entitlement, and historical privilege for hardline religion for which there's no longer popular support.

alaimacerc · 11-01-2014 12:09AM

weisses wrote: »

I did ... Couldn't find anything more reliable then the census other then opinions and other waffle ... You seem to know where the more reliable info is ... can you point out where ?

i.e. you found plenty (at least if you actually did look), but declared it out of hand to be "not more reliable than the census", because you've decided that the census is, inherently, more reliable than everything else. We've danced this dance in this thread before, you know.

What facts ?

Im looking for facts from you regarding the census, but so far its only ill informed opinions your blurring out

The fact of the huuuuuge amount of evidence for very significant numbers of people being declared to be "Catholic", and sharing no identifiable "Catholic" belief or practice, for starters.

Again, why "regarding the census"? If the bishops run a survey and find 10% of "Catholics" are actually atheist, but it fails to add the magic words "regarding the census", then that's somehow has no validity about the actual population? We don't want evidence about the population, we want evidence about what the census says of the population? The census confirmation bias seems to be extending to the level of a game of "[Saint] Simon says."

Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

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