Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

TheChizler · 23-01-2014 01:16AM

But isn't the term Muslim on par with Christian? It encompasses a whole subset which have specific rules. You should be arguing was he really Sunni or Shia or whatever if you're using it as an analogy for Catholicism.

Edit: As long as he kept the Five Pillars of Islam I see no reason not to call him a Muslim.

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 01:21AM

TheChizler wrote: »

But isn't the term Muslim on par with Christian? It encompasses a whole subset which have specific rules. You should be arguing was he really Sunni or Shia or whatever if you're using it as an analogy for Catholicism.

You\d have a point if you point out an Islamic sect that says sex with hookers is all good.

TheChizler · 23-01-2014 01:27AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

You\d have a point if you point out an Islamic sect that says sex with hookers is all good.

Don't you mean one that doesn't explicitly or implicitly ban it? I could point to non-denominational Muslims.

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 01:35AM

TheChizler wrote: »

Don't you mean one that doesn't explicitly or implicitly ban it? I could point to non-denominational Muslims.

Huh, taking prostitutes in forbidden in ALL ISLAM, not specific branches of it only, therefore all that is relevant ot establishing the hypocrist is the knowledge that Awlaki was Muslim, or was he...

alaimacerc · 23-01-2014 01:37AM

I Heart Internet wrote: »

There's the problem right there.

Hey, it's not like I was exactly cheering the lack of a source, was it now?

It seems this was reported by both the Dublin archdiocese and the Irish Times. But the one has a broken link, and the other is paywalled. (Any IT subbers care to look it up and give us the skinny?)

The results seem to be summarised here:

Archbish Martin #1 wrote:

The situation in the Archdiocese of Dublin is not dissimilar to that in other dioceses across the world. Sunday Mass attendance has gone down noticeably in the past years. On any given Sunday about 18% of the Catholic population will attend Mass. Some will come to Mass regularly but not on a weekly basis. The drop in Mass attendance among young people is particularly worrying.

So the first thing to note here is (that I didn't pick up on at all from the IC piece), he's only talking about (the diocese of) Dublin. Not the Republic, not the island, not his Primacy, not even his Province. So if Dubs are a bunch of secularised apostate heathens with entirely different behaviour from holy, god-fearing Real Ireland, that might explain some of the discrepancy. (And it wouldn't be entirely out of line with stereotype, either.)

But note also that the 18% is a total for the average week, not the proportion attending every week. If you deduct the numbers attending once a month, the numbers just showing up "on special occasions", etc, it'll be significantly lower still.

TheChizler · 23-01-2014 01:48AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Huh, taking prostitutes in forbidden in ALL ISLAM, not specific branches of it only, therefore all that is relevant ot establishing the hypocrist is the knowledge that Awlaki was Muslim, or was he...

Is it? To be honest I don't know. If it absolutely unarguably is forbidden (even to those who don't subscribe to a formal denomination) I would have to say that he wasn't a very good Muslim if/when he did that. But being a Muslim isn't a formally defined concept, it has no universal set of rules that all people who use it as their descriptor must adhere to. There's a basic minimum that must be met (such as believing in the Islamic version of god/believing the Qur'an is the word of Allah) but it's totally different from the specifics that come into play once you bring denomination into it. I dislike the idiom, but comparing the definition of Catholic to the definition if Islamic is comparing apples and oranges.

Peregrinus · 23-01-2014 01:57AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

But note also that the 18% is a total for the average week, not the proportion attending every week. If you deduct the numbers attending once a month, the numbers just showing up "on special occasions", etc, it'll be significantly lower still.

Yes. On the other hand, if you get 18% in the average week, and some of the 18% is make up of people who attend regularly but not weekly, then the total number of (people who attend weekly) + (people who attend less frequently, but still regularly) is higher than 18% since, in an average week, some of the latter group are not there, and are not counted.

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 02:01AM

TheChizler wrote: »

Is it? To be honest I don't know. If it absolutely unarguably is forbidden (even to those who don't subscribe to a formal denomination) I would have to say that he wasn't a very good Muslim if/when he did that. But being a Muslim isn't a formally defined concept, it has no universal set of rules that all people who use it as their descriptor must adhere to. There's a basic minimum that must be met (such as believing in the Islamic version of god/believing the Qur'an is the word of Allah) but it's totally different from the specifics that come into play once you bring denomination into it. I dislike the idiom, but comparing the definition of Catholic to the definition if Islamic is comparing apples and oranges.

I believe you are mistaken.

17:32

Sahih International
And do not approach unlawful sexual intercourse. Indeed, it is ever an immorality and is evil as a way.

Zināʾ falls under the Islamic sexual jurisprudence of Fiqh, which is an expansion of the Sharia code of conduct given in the Qur'an.
Across all four schools of Sunni practice, and the two schools of Shi'a practice, the term zināʾ signifies voluntary sexual intercourse between a man and a woman not married to one another,

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 02:03AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yes. On the other hand, if you get 18% in the average week, and some of the 18% is make up of people who attend regularly but not weekly, then the total number of (people who attend weekly) + (people who attend less frequently, but still regularly) is higher than 18% since, in an average week, some of the latter group are not there, and are not counted.

Plus there is the unquantifiable number who would desire to attend but are unable to do due to health reasons, working 2 jpbs to make ends meet and so on.

alaimacerc · 23-01-2014 02:05AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Do you want to spin the wheel on the wheel of hypocrisy/ All you have to do is answer this question.

*sob*

Look, this is wildly off-topic. The people actually engaging with the topic have told you this several times. Instead of paying heed, you just come back with "Ha, everyone avoids my mighty deflectionary question! Answer me this! [loop back to start]" It doesn't get any more on-topic with repetition.

Also, it's the gravest of discourtesy to other posters to repeatedly pull the stunt of dismissing out of hand the points put to you, then insist that they answer your questions. Especially when (as generally seems to be the case) the former speak more to the topic than the latter. I'm pretty sure no-one died and made you Lord High Determiner of Which Questions Are To Be Answered.

TheChizler · 23-01-2014 02:07AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I believe you are mistaken.

That would be seem to be a punishable crime though, and not a tenent of the religion?

alaimacerc · 23-01-2014 02:11AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yes. On the other hand, if you get 18% in the average week, and some of the 18% is make up of people who attend regularly but not weekly, then the total number of (people who attend weekly) + (people who attend less frequently, but still regularly) is higher than 18% since, in an average week, some of the latter group are not there, and are not counted.

Yes, surely. Number of people attending monthly-or-more (say) > number of people there in any given week > number of people attending weekly-or-more.

It's also possible that if he's counting Sundays only, then he's missing a few that rarely/never attend that day, but regularly do at services on other days. Those people seem to not be doing it the way the church is telling them to, and I doubt they're especially numerous, but I guess we have to bear them in mind when trying to compare across results compiled on a different basis.

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 02:14AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

*sob*

Look, this is wildly off-topic. The people actually engaging with the topic have told you this several times. Instead of paying heed, you just come back with "Ha, everyone avoids my mighty deflectionary question! Answer me this! [loop back to start]" It doesn't get any more on-topic with repetition.

Also, it's the gravest of discourtesy to other posters to repeatedly pull the stunt of dismissing out of hand the points put to you, then insist that they answer your questions. Especially when (as generally seems to be the case) the former speak more to the topic than the latter. I'm pretty sure no-one died and made you Lord High Determiner of Which Questions Are To Be Answered.

How ia it off topic.

If the argument goes that disobedience to your religion\s stated positions is proof that you are not actually a member of that religion, even if you self identify with this same religion then the same must apply to all religions/

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 02:17AM

TheChizler wrote: »

That would be seem to be a punishable crime though, and not a tenent of the religion?

I just quoted the Quran to you. It is THE central tenet that the Quran is the word of God.

Turtwig · 23-01-2014 02:30AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I just quoted the Quran to you. It is THE central tenet that the Quran is the word of God.

And if a person who self identifies as muslim doesn't believe that's the central tenet then it's not the central tenet. So what's the point in quoting it?

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 02:34AM

Jernal wrote: »

And if a person who self identifies as muslim doesn't believe that's the central tenet then it's not the central tenet. So what's the point in quoting it?

Name a single Muslim from the 1 billion plus who believes this.

Turtwig · 23-01-2014 02:43AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Name a single Muslim from the 1 billion plus who believes this.

Naming would be wrong. People have a right to their privacy. Especially when there's a risk others may not construe it so peacefully. Apostasy is the label some may passionately toss on it. There may even be some people on this thread who self identify as muslim but don't believe that central tenet. What does it matter though? As long as they self identify as belong to islam then they're islamic and that's what's the belief in Islam entails. So the quotation you provided is irrelevant.

J_E · 23-01-2014 03:01AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Do you want to spin the wheel on the wheel of hypocrisy/ All you have to do is answer this question.

Was the radical Islamic American preacher Anwar al Awlaki a Muslim,

etc etc

Wait...what did this have to do with anything?

Regarding the attendance numbers, so far nobody can do anything better than a 1000 person Iona Institute(!) survey and a 2000 person Irish Bishops survey. Not exactly inspiring confidence in these figures pulled out of the air and numbers played around with?
There's no point calculating numbers like that, let's just agree that numbers have evidently dwindled.

alaimacerc · 23-01-2014 03:51AM

Cydoniac wrote: »

Wait...what did this have to do with anything?

You might well wonder. I sure did.

Regarding the attendance numbers, so far nobody can do anything better than a 1000 person Iona Institute(!) survey and a 2000 person Irish Bishops survey. Not exactly inspiring confidence in these figures pulled out of the air and numbers played around with?
There's no point calculating numbers like that, let's just agree that numbers have evidently dwindled.

To be fair, those are very typical sample sizes in surveys carried out by professional polling organisations for all sorts of purposes. The variation in the results does give cause for concern for their robustness, though.

23-01-2014 03:54AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Name a single Muslim from the 1 billion plus who believes this.

Why wouldn't there be? There's sizable fractions of "christans" who do not even believe in God.

Could it be hard to believe perhaps because a person who does not believe the Quran is the word of god cannot rightly be called a Muslim?

alaimacerc · 23-01-2014 03:58AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

If the argument goes that disobedience to your religion\s stated positions is proof that you are not actually a member of that religion

Aaaaaaaaand it's not. We done with the Muslim-baiting yet?

alaimacerc · 23-01-2014 04:05AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I just quoted the Quran to you. It is THE central tenet that the Quran is the word of God.

See "Five Pillars of Islam", and in particular shahada, which is the defining statement of belief (as I pointed out before). That's even moreso that the Christian creed, since those were wrangled out by Church Councils after the fact, whereas the shahada is itself directly the means by which one "converts" to Islam, by stating it to be one's own belief.

The game you're playing is akin to arguing "Christians believe that the Bible is Holy Writ, therefore every dot and comma of Leviticus is as central to the religion as the Creed or the Sermon on the Mount".

alaimacerc · 23-01-2014 04:13AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Plus there is the unquantifiable number who would desire to attend but are unable to do due to health reasons, working 2 jpbs to make ends meet and so on.

Merely unquantified, not inherently unquantifiable. And is this especially pertinent to a "horizontal" comparison of the decline over the years? Are people especially sicker and poorer now than in the '60s and '80s?

Peregrinus · 23-01-2014 04:59AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

Merely unquantified, not inherently unquantifiable. And is this especially pertinent to a "horizontal" comparison of the decline over the years? Are people especially sicker and poorer now than in the '60s and '80s?

Well, there are probably more people working in conditions which make it difficult to attend Sunday mass, as Sunday trading, "flexible" working patterns, etc, become more and more the norm.

A bigger factor, I suspect, is that even amoung serious Catholics mass attendance is not seen as the touchstone it once was, so people are more willing to miss mass than they used to be, without that necessarily compromising either the strength or the substance of their Catholic self-identification.

But I suspect these issues are marginal in the bigger picture. They do not account to any great degree for the huge decline in mass attendance overall. I'd hazard a guess that that's largely down to changing social expectations about whether people will attend mass. Or, in other words, in the past a lot of people went to mass mainly because everyone - including themselves - expected them to.

smacl · 23-01-2014 09:38AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Or, in other words, in the past a lot of people went to mass mainly because everyone - including themselves - expected them to.

One wonders would the same be true more generally of religion in Ireland. In the past nobody questioned the priest. In the past people believed much of what was contained in the bible to be literally true. In the past creation myths were believed by many Irish Catholics. In the past people believed homosexuality was a grave sin and referred to gay sex as sodomy which would buy you a one way ticket to hell.

It begs the question, what exactly is left, and what if any common beliefs does the Irish person who self identifies as being a Catholic still have. It seems to me to be as much of a tradition as a religion at this point.

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 11:17AM

Cydoniac wrote: »

Wait...what did this have to do with anything?

I've already explained this. It exposes the double-standard where anybody doing anything negative doesn't have the same scrutiny applied to their faith.

Cydoniac wrote: »

Regarding the attendance numbers, so far nobody can do anything better than a 1000 person Iona Institute(!) survey and a 2000 person Irish Bishops survey. Not exactly inspiring confidence in these figures pulled out of the air and numbers played around with?
There's no point calculating numbers like that, let's just agree that numbers have evidently dwindled.

Two points.

1.The surveys weren't carried out by the Iona Institute and the Bishop's Conference people, they were carried out by professional polling companies at their behest.

2. I could count the number of times I've attended a regular mass service in the last 5-10 years on one hand. Even if I was a regular attender then I would be making giant leaps greater than Neil Armstrong to base my opinion on a single Church when there must be hundreds in Ireland.

What exactly are you basing your opinion on other than assumption?

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 11:18AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

Merely unquantified, not inherently unquantifiable. And is this especially pertinent to a "horizontal" comparison of the decline over the years? Are people especially sicker and poorer now than in the '60s and '80s?

Quantify it then.

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 11:19AM

alaimacerc wrote: »

See "Five Pillars of Islam".

See the Quran. Without which thers is no "Five Pillars of Islam" nor Islam itself.

Brown Bomber · 23-01-2014 11:22AM

Jernal wrote: »

Naming would be wrong. People have a right to their privacy. Especially when there's a risk others may not construe it so peacefully. Apostasy is the label some may passionately toss on it. There may even be some people on this thread who self identify as muslim but don't believe that central tenet. What does it matter though? As long as they self identify as belong to islam then they're islamic and that's what's the belief in Islam entails. So the quotation you provided is irrelevant.

I'm not asking you to out an "Infidel" in the tribal region of Pakistan. I'm merely asking you to name a single self-identified Muslim in the history of Islam that rejects the Quran.

gaynorvader · 23-01-2014 11:25AM

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Plus there is the unquantifiable number who would desire to attend but are unable to do due to health reasons, working 2 jpbs to make ends meet and so on.

And so don't go to mass every week, which is what we're discussing, isn't it?

And as far as the Muslim angle goes, I'd apply the same criteria. If they identify as a Muslim, but have no intention of following all its rules, they are either ignorant or hypocrites.

Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

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