Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

CramCycle · 14-01-2014 01:08PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

The census shouldn't be a referendum or opinion poll. It really shouldn't. Where would one end with that approach?

I was responding to another post brought up, I thought I made it clear.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Which incarnation?

Looks like Paul McGann, acts like Colin Baker, sounds like David Tennant.

Bannasidhe · 14-01-2014 01:16PM

I am Spartacus.*

:pac:

*I may really be a middle aged Irish woman but I can self-identify as anything I want apparently and this must be respected.

robindch · 14-01-2014 09:33PM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I may really be a middle aged Irish woman but I can self-identify as anything I want apparently and this must be respected.[/SIZE]

Is 100% of you self-identifying, or just 90%?

I'm thinking tip-of-Egyptian-nose south, though I'll concede on delicious-ankle-north too.

(*) Hey, us mods can post - nyah, nyah, nyah!

Turtwig · 14-01-2014 09:43PM

Rob it's only been five minutes but I'm already fed up of you. We need the other posters back.

Mark Hamill · 14-01-2014 10:00PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I'm afraid not. It's nothing personal but you can't honestly expect me to hold a discussion with someone who fabricates definitions out of thin air to suit their own needs.

Drop the sanctimony, you aren't fooling anyone. The people surveyed were given a number of different positions re:god and asked which best described their beliefs. They had the choice of either an interventionist god or a general life force/spirit. Therefore choosing "I don't know" is a damn sight closer to not believing in god than it is to believing god. And that's besides the point I made about how the people who chose life spirit are also not catholics, given how the god of the catholic bible is so specifically interventionist.

Want to drop the childishness and engage with the debate? I'd point out that your posts are haemorrhaging credibility at this stage, but given your history in this forum it's not like you started with much.

Mark Hamill · 14-01-2014 10:04PM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

That's not why the question is asked. Why do you feel the need to shoe-horn specific social issues into a question and make it even more unlikely that you would get a sensible answer.

The census is not a series of mini-referendums on social issues.

What sex are you?
What age are you?
What type of job do you have?
What religion are you?
How do you feel about abortion?

Can you spot the odd one out?

Ok, so why then is the question asked? We can see from all the evidence displayed in this thread that people will call themselves religions they clearly are not, so the census question really only tells us what religion they self-identify as, not which one they actually follow. If that is all the census wants, then the question should be "what religion do you self-identify as?", as its the answer they get anyway.

Mark Hamill · 14-01-2014 10:11PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Which part of Pope Francis' statement did you not understand?

"We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church.”

Or should we rely on the statements of Pope Mark Hamill or Pope Nodin etc to dictate who can consider themselves Catholic?

Pope Francis is a PR mouthpiece, spewing niceties without making any actual changes. Or has he made it possible for people to officially leave the catholic church now?

catallus · 14-01-2014 10:14PM

Why on earth should he change anything!!?

PopePalpatine · 14-01-2014 10:20PM

A rotten hierarchy, for starters.

Nodin · 14-01-2014 10:27PM

catallus wrote: »

Why on earth should he change anything!!?

Why shouldn't he? He can use the oul magisterial authority much as he sees fit. And if he gets the Bishops in on it, if memory serves me, its taken as being the infallible wisdom of whatever.

Nodin · 14-01-2014 10:30PM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Here is quotations from Pope Francis.
http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview

And until it goes into an encyclical, its just remarks in an interview, afaik.

catallus · 14-01-2014 10:35PM

Nodin wrote: »

Why shouldn't he? He can [.....] whatever.

The idea that one should affect change for the sake of change is an indictment of the throwaway culture which the man himself derides.

Why should he change anything? A poster mentioned earlier "The whims of the church", which is a bit rich; say what you like about the diktats of that organisation, but whimsical they aint.....

Nodin · 14-01-2014 10:48PM

catallus wrote: »

The idea that one should affect change for the sake of change is an indictment of the throwaway culture which the man himself derides.

Why should he change anything? A poster mentioned earlier "The whims of the church", which is a bit rich; say what you like about the diktats of that organisation, but whimsical they aint.....

Why? Because they're laden down with nonsensical medieval baggage. The rules on sex are nuts, the ones on contraception likewise.

catallus · 14-01-2014 10:50PM

Nodin wrote: »

Why? Because they're laden down with nonsensical medieval baggage. The rules on sex are nuts, the ones on contraception likewise.

That's, like, your opinion.

Nodin · 14-01-2014 11:01PM

catallus wrote: »

That's, like, your opinion.

And, oddly enough, the opinion of a whole load of "catholics". While most ignore the rules on contraception, most don't even know the rules on sex (save about -pre-marital sex).

catallus · 14-01-2014 11:07PM

That is so presumptuous of you; can you not see that making such generalised statements is silly?

Nodin · 14-01-2014 11:15PM

catallus wrote: »

That is so presumptuous of you; can you not see that making such generalised statements is silly?

Well, given that such a high percentage of people claim to be catholic, and seeing these numbers are for married couples alone....
http://www.indexmundi.com/ireland/contraceptive-use-among-currently-married-women-15-49-years-old.html
...its a statement of fact.

catallus · 14-01-2014 11:49PM

The fact is that you make broad sweeping statements about what people believe and criticise them because it doesn't chime with what you would like them to believe and then to bolster your own position you accuse them of being deluded hypocrites ("catholics").

Your inability or unwillingness to accept that people can believe in a set of moral and intellectual rules is indicative of shallow thinking.

Corkfeen · 14-01-2014 11:58PM

catallus wrote: »

That is so presumptuous of you; can you not see that making such generalised statements is silly?

The strong support for same sex marriage would indicate that the public's view does not align with the Church's.

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 01:14AM

I'd better not respond to catallus' comments on others being "silly" and "shallow", because whatever their merits or otherwise as critical thinkers and debaters, the "the census is grand, sure we're 90% Christian in our beliefs right enough!" crowd do seem to have mastered better than I the arts of insulting people just short of the point where the mods reprimand them.

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 01:26AM

Nodin wrote: »

Why shouldn't he? He can use the oul magisterial authority much as he sees fit. And if he gets the Bishops in on it, if memory serves me, its taken as being the infallible wisdom of whatever.

I'm not 100% clear on the distinction, if there is any, but I believe that either the Pope "ex cathedra" (which is a bit like "Simon says" -- he's not "infallible" if he's just giving an interview, and so on) or the bishops and the pope in council can do this. Certainly historically, each has occurred on different occasions.

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 01:42AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Which part of Pope Francis' statement did you not understand?

"We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church.”

Or should we rely on the statements of Pope Mark Hamill or Pope Nodin etc to dictate who can consider themselves Catholic?

So, using the person at the top of the hierarchy as authority, ironically enough, you're saying that we should ignore the definitions of the hierarchy, and go with "collective hunch of the body of the church"? (At least where that's what suits you, I imagine.)

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 01:52AM

smacl wrote: »

I would assume up to the point at which the church tells the self identified Catholic that they are no longer a member of that church. If we take the RCC hierarchy as being cynical, this is never going to happen to lay members, as they do not want their membership numbers eroded further than has already happened.

Even if (you don't think that) the church isn't being cynical, that's clearly the practice. The RCC regards itself as a "universal" church, so in that sense it makes sense that it divides people into good members and bad members, rather than members and ex-members.

Also, the tiny number of people excommunicated may or may not still self-identify as Catholic... (The church still does so regard them, but how we regard the status of people with this status is somewhat open, as they're clearly not (currently) "full" members in the obvious senses of the concept.)

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 01:57AM

robindch wrote: »

TThe one thing that it almost certainly does not mean is that they are in full communion with the teaching of the RCC, since almost nobody is.

Lots of people willing to operate under the presumption that they are, though. And the hierarchy is willing to go along with it...

catallus · 15-01-2014 02:01AM

Hi, Alaimacerc. A soul as sensitive and well-informed as yourself shouldn't self-censor one's opinions for fear of upsetting others. Let it out. All this cynical reduction of faith and religious freedom to asinine political swiping by wilfully mis-informed misanthropes is hard to read. A bit of variety might help.

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 02:10AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

This just gets better and better.

Before we go any further can we clarify that to you when someone answers "don't know what to think", to the question "Do you believe in God?" it means "No".

Fascinating. So, not only do you fancy that you know better than a couple of rugby teams' worth of bishops how to interpret answers to the question "do you believe in God?", you're now telling us that "don't know what to think" may well actually mean that they have a completely orthodox belief in the personal god of Catholicism, they just didn't realize they believed it?

And to a different question, in a different survey -- who was it that was cherry-picking, remind me?

robindch · 15-01-2014 02:10AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

[...] the "the census is grand, sure we're 90% Christian in our beliefs right enough!" crowd do seem to have mastered better than I the arts of insulting people just short of the point where the mods reprimand them.

catallus wrote: »

All this cynical reduction of faith and religious freedom to asinine political swiping by wilfully mis-informed misanthropes is hard to read.

If one side can do no better than descend into juvenile fist-waving, then sometimes it's just best to leave them vent away.

God, after all, has chosen to allow them do far more damage to their own sacred causes than any of us godless lot can, and who am I to doubt God's will?

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 02:18AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Also, it doesn't give the margin of error, but I've worked it out at 3.1% which leaves us with potentially 1.6% or 150 people of Catholics surveyed in this poll not believing in God.

Did I just hear you say, that not only per your earlier statements that surveys tell us nothing at all about the population they're sampled for, but that there's an "margin of error" among the people actually being surveyed? 3.1% of people think "this is a survey, I'd better lie, as opposed to the census, where of course I must be entirely accurate"?

I think we explained all this already. Again, I'd better refrain from frank conclusions...

alaimacerc · 15-01-2014 02:24AM

robindch wrote: »

If one side can do no better than descend into juvenile fist-waving, then sometimes it's just best to leave them vent away.

I must admit I'm somewhat in the "let that be the last blow you receive unanswered" temperament when it comes to internet-disapprobating. Which isn't to say it's necessarily the most prudent or productive course.

God, after all, has chosen to allow them do far more damage to their own sacred causes than any of us godless lot can, and who am I to doubt God's will?

I'm occasionally reminded of Saint Sinead of Connor, who (in an admittedly much more serious context), once wondered "do these people actually believe in god?" Though the same survey referred to above did imply quite a gap between that and belief in heaven, and another with belief in hell. So various people may be dining in different sections of the cafeteria...

catallus · 15-01-2014 02:30AM

No, it's not helping at all I'm afraid. It really is a one string bow around here, sadly.

Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

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