Exactly what percentage of the population is "christian"?

Jernal wrote: »

*Checks to see where swampgas' modhat is. *
Must be in the back seat somewhere.
:pac:

He has a point in fairness.

There is an interesting discussion to be had on when a religion (any religion)so permeates a society that it becomes so inextricably interwoven with culture as to be near impossible to separate.

Granted, this is an aspect of this discussion but, given the thread title, should be confined specifically to Ireland and focused primarily (but not exclusively) on Roman Catholicism as it impacts directly on the lives of most of us posting here.

There is room for a wider ranging discussion that looks at all religions and takes a global perspective but I do think that is for another thread and - seeing as BB doesn't seem to be interested enough in the topic to start that thread- it does appear that what he is doing is deflecting and introducing whataboutry to this thread by constantly referencing Islam and Breivik rather than sticking to discussing Ireland.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Muslim terrorists who act unislamic in their normal life should have the same are they actually-a-member-of-that-religion test applied to them as people who fill out the census. That is the point I am making, it has nothing to do with discrimination against Muslims.

All well and good in principle, but I doubt many people posting here know enough about Islam be able to say that with any degree of authority.

I imagine that most, if not all the people posting here were raised in places (the UK and Ireland mostly) with predominantly Christian/Catholic religious influences and whether or not any of us believe, or have believed in any if it, it's what we were brought up with and would have the most knowledge/experience of outside of what we could find via Google.

So now after more then 1900 posts

What do individual people believe are the correct numbers regarding the actual/true figures asked in the OP when looking using census/polls/referendums/moon cycles/fortunetelling?

I Heart Internet wrote: »

If I had reason to believe a crime had been committed, I'd go straight to the Gardai.

You mean such as institutional child abuse on a massive scale over decades and an international conspiracy to conceal that from the authorities?

It's a good job nothing like that ever happened in the church or there wou....oh wait...

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Impossible to get a "correct number".

Certainly not going to be possible to get a better one, if people insist on an approach of "'tis grand, carry on as always."

As religious beliefs (or lack of them) are a personal matter, the best thing to do would be to ask people. Best thing after that is to ask the head of each household.

Possibly something you should pass on the CSO, then, because as has been pointed out repeatedly, this isn't what the census does. So, it's no measure at all of that whatsoever.

The census results give the best approximation of numbers of christians, muslims, atheists, etc in Ireland. No other assumptions/approximations/extrapolation of opinion surveys come close to the census.

Well, thanks for clearing that up, then. Be sure to also write to your local bishop, and tell him not to be wasting any more parish dues on measuring the rates of "Catholics" that don't believe in god (and/or pretty much any other "religious belief" that you might associate with that "religion").

AerynSun wrote: »

I come from a happy place where the single biggest 'religious' grouping on our national census 2012 is for "No Religion" - at a whopping 15.1% of the total population.

We have the RCC at an earth-shaking 7.03% of the total

Aside: This translates to 3,151,791 people

I don't like either to pry, or to sound a bit thick... Maybe my maths or google-use is failing me today, but I can't for the life of me work out what country you're referring to. Sounds like an extreme version of the Netherlands' demographics, but several times the size.

Muslim - 1.46%
Hindu - 1.23%
New Age - 0.56%
Jewish - 0.17%
Buddhism - 0.07%

So... what happened to the other 74.38% of the population? Split between a whole series of diminishing-returns Protestant denoms?

Brown Bomber wrote: »

What I have been trying to explain over and over again. Is that these surveys which have been shared do not discredit the census with exception of the small number of self-professed Catholics who don't believe in God. Everything else can be explained with the respondent remaining Catholic,

Then you need a considerably better set of explanations. BC survey samples rate of unbelief (in any sort of god) at 10.1%. That's a "very small" 389,331 (rounding up by about quarter of a person). You largely "explain" this by belittling the surveys you don't like, cherry-picking ones you like slightly better, and completely misunderstanding the nature of the statistics of population-sampling.

You're yet to spell out this set of "rudimentary spiritual beliefs", but if they don't include (some degree of) belief not just a god, but in at least some version of a theistic, anthropomorphic, and indeed triune deity, in the virgin birth, in the resurrection, and in heaven, then you're not within a bull's roar of "Christian", much less "Catholic". (And the survey evidence is that non-belief in those is all higher still.)

On the other hand, we have people accepting Breivik as a Christian based purely on his self-identifying.

Eh, no, we don't. We have people describing him as a Christian based on his self-reported beliefs and actions. (Which are clearly very, very warped, and very possibly entirely insincere anyway, but if you're going to attempt to make inferences from his statements, you have to give them some degree of credence.)

Even then, this opinion formed from the outside that you have of an indiividual never carries a greater weight than the opinion of themselves and their personal and private relationship between themselves and their Church. This is a matter of personal freedoms and liberty and to not be pidgeon-holed by others.

This is IHI's argument from earlier, that (s)he's had the decency to at least row back on somewhat. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your (and more to the point, religious slackers that won't care anyway's) "personal religious freedom" ends at my right of free speech. (Assuming I'm not actually libelling anyone or inciting hatred, for example, which I think I'm on pretty safe grounds with saying "people with no religious belief or religious practice aren't actually religious, regardless of what box they ticked on the census".)

Jernal wrote: »

Brevik's manifest consolidates his position as a troll. I think he just wrote heaps of those words so they could be put into nice easy quotes for the media to harp on about. He covered just about every section of society in the darn thing.

There's some truth to that, I'm sure, but it's not clear how to "correct" for that. Is he primarily concerned with trolling the Christians, and hence wanted to overstate the degree to which Christianity provided his motivation and "framework"? Or was he primarily seeking to troll everyone else, which could equally well cause him to wish to downplay that?

I Heart Internet wrote: »

I seem to recall suggesting (or agreeing to the suggstion) that these privately owned and state funded schools be called "state-funded schools".

To be precise, I used it to clarify "state school", and you piggybacked in the fee-payers, in a way clearly designed to dilute the sense of that.

This reflects the reality.

In a funhouse mirror fashion, at best.

Calling privately owned and managed schools "state schools" is entirely misleading. It suggests that the Govt need only issue a circular and every school will cease to be unique and become Public School No. 1, Public School No. 2, etc.

No, it suggests that a) they're largely built by the state, b) they're very largely funded by the state, and c) people's entirely reasonable expectation that it be run in line with what the DoE says, rather than the Vatican.

What modest steps beyond a "circular" would be required to get provision more in line with demand is an interesting but distinctly "drifty" topic. (But it's clearly not the "suspend the constitution, ban religion freedom, violate private property rights, socialist secular nightmare!" vista you're apt to try to conjure up.)