UK Atheists Hope to Eliminate Jedi Population

[theNater]

But if you support the idea that there are religions in UK and it part of the peoples life, it will enforce and justify their spending on religion on schools and other religious funding. SO if you really are against government spending your tax money on religious support in different facilities you are pissing on your own parade.

The idea that someone who is a member of any religion will be in support of any religious spending is as ridiculous as the idea that all atheists are necessarily opposed to all religious spending.

If the government is only looking at the religion option as a binary yes/no choice, the problems run deep enough that merely having that yes/no number right is not going to fix anything.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

As a proud Jedi (it's true.) I must say this is horrible. My sayings go out to those UK Jedi. Keep strong!! XD

 

[Flauros]

Sounds like theyre just trying to get accurate poll date. Sounds fine to me....

 

[Unesh52]

If I were a legislator in the UK, I would want people to not lie on their census form for the sake of being ironic and contrary.

Let me guess, atheist?

Yes. Is this going somewhere or are you just going for an Ad Hominem attack?

I understand that it's usually a joke; I even found it quite funny when I heard about it a few years ago. I also accept that there are some people who genuinely consider themselves Jedi, in a spiritual sense, and I can respect that. But whether or not you think it's useful data or if you think they use it correctly, law makers use the census to help make decisions. It's not fair on the non-religious community (which may include the people who claim Jedi), who are marginalized in public decisions because they're underrepresented. It'd be like putting down "Klingon" as your race. Sure, if the results came back and the Daily Mail gets to run a headline that "40% of people in Bristol are extraterrestrials," we all get a laugh. Neato. But at the same time, that leaves 40% of Bristol unaccounted for by the data.

People used to mock me when I talked about militant atheists....

Militant Atheism? Campaigning to get people to more seriously consider the answers they give to polls which decide public policy is militant? The campaign doesn't seek to convert the religious, it merely seeks to let those who are already non-religious be more accurately represented by the national statistics. What's wrong with that?

 

[DoW Lowen]

So let me get this straight, the situation plays out something like this:

Atheists: "You're stupid! So you should give your voting/census power to us!"

I definitely wouldn't want those kinds of assholes in power, just on principle.

Bashing atheism. Hmmm that's almost as new as bashing religion. It is really quite remarkable how atheist opinions are so quickly shot down by this community, anything they say is immediately taken as hostile. From the countless polls down on here from users, at least half of us are agnostic, half of the agnostics are non-believers and about a tenth of them are anti-theistic. I really don't get it.

In regards to the news story though:

As a nerd I find this fucking hilarious.

As a researcher I find this quite annoying since Census data is something we heavily rely on as a form of demographic since it's standardized and actually attempts to collect data from a complete population, census is held every four years so for four long years we have over 400,000 invalid participants in a sample population, and that can be very frustrating. I'm down here in Australia and New Zealand the same thing happens, and though it seems more than likely putting down Jedi means you don't subscribe to a particular religion, ethically we cannot make such an assumption so we're left with a giant hole in what would be potential psychological/social research.

As an atheist though I still find it fucking hilarious (atheists do have a sense of humor too you know), I can't ignore my responsibilities to the scientific method, and while I understand that people can choose whatever they wish, this campaign is simply asking people to consider that things like research, demographic data and target population matters, so even if 1/8 change from Jedi to Atheist come next census that's still an extra 50, 000 people added to what is arguably an important minority.

 

[VGC USpartan VS]

You could almost say they're trying to execute order 66 maybe? Get it? Geddit?

True, true, true.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Heh. I just got the UK census documents, and reading through the questions I've got to wonder what the point of half of them is?

What is the government trying to learn?

There's a lot of issues that have just as much impact on people's lives that the census doesn't ask about, yet they feel the need to ask people's religion, ethnicity, and job description...

Sometimes, I wonder how they decide which questions merit being on the census and which don't.

Also, I'm reminded of my mother's paranoia about census information...

She refuses to put her name on a census form. Yes, she is paranoid, but not without reason;
She's dutch.

And one of the most thorough modern census serveys ever conducted was done by the dutch government in the 1930's.

The dutch government had no ill intent, and the census was conducted for perfectly legitimate and harmless reasons.
But, Germany invaded the netherlands just a few years later, and in the process got a hold of everything the dutch government had.
Guess what the census data was used for?

I'll give you a hint: Of all the Jewish communities in Europe, the most thorough extermination happened in the Netherlands.

Of course, these days, Census data is kind of trivial compared to what companies such as Google might know about you...
It doesn't matter if you can trust the companies or governments that collect this data, if you can't be sure who will get hold of it in the future.
After all, it wasn't the Dutch government that abused their census data...

 

[Formica Archonis]

Sith Eats

Worst roadside diner in the entire Valley of the Dark Lords.

Sith Teas

A little too hoity-toity but at least the food's good. Way better than Sith Eats and only two tombs down.

 

[dowdpride]

but it is a real religeon

 

[Randomologist]

In protesting against putting Jedi, they have now incurred a classic knee-jerk reaction of "oh, fuck off", and people will now enter Jedi specifically to annoy them. Its trolling in real life.

 

[thirion1850]

The force is not strong with them.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Oh crap another census.

What's it called if you have been baptised, used to go to church as a kid, celebrate Christmas but don't believe in god and don't think the Bible is any kind of law or edict but mere parable?

Atheist seems too harsh to go by, so too for "no-religion", and mighty hypocritical considering how many Christian festivals and activities I take part in, I mean I know Jews and Muslims who feel they can't join in Christmas and stuff like that.

Maybe agnostic? Will they put that on the census or will they think most people won't understand that term.

I'd be worried about putting down Christian on my form. To me it is mere cultural heritage, but someone may like the manipulate the statistics to make it out I (and many others) would be in favour of religious based laws or rulings... hell no, I have very secular ideals.

The census form (in the UK) doesn't ask if you're an athiest. The options are: 'No Religion', (a list of 6 common religions), and an option to choose 'other religion'

Note that it also explicitly lumps together religious sects as being counted as the same thing. (So being Catholic or Protestant isn't regarded as a separate religion, both are expected to choose Christian.)

 

[Randomologist]

The force is not strong with them.

The farce is strong with them.

 

[Eldarion]

Why do atheists that make the news have to make us all look bad when they do?

 

[Twilight_guy]

Actually the government, although they would like the clean things up and avoid trolls on there census, should recognize that people might actually believe in this stuff. If they want to completely eliminate it then they should enforcement some minimum standards for marked religions to qualify (minimum membership or something that needs sot be confirmed with he state). That way they avoid small stuff like this without insulting someone by possibly calling their religion fake. If people get upset over a need to register, lump all unqualified religions into some "other" group and say that their small size makes doing more economical while maintaining the actual numbers somewhere else.

East Sith

West side Sith 4 Life!

 

[The_Healer]

I think the UK should hold a national swing to the dark side.

Everyone put "Sith" this year!

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Campaigning to get people to more seriously consider the answers they give to polls which decide public policy is militant? The campaign doesn't seek to convert the religious, it merely seeks to let those who are already non-religious be more accurately represented by the national statistics. What's wrong with that?

Because atheism is an anti-religion. They're not campaigning for the public rights, they're campaigning against religious rights. It's not like the polls have any more function than voting, other than which figurehead you get to stand behind.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Bashing atheism. Hmmm that's almost as new as bashing religion. It is really quite remarkable how atheist opinions are so quickly shot down by this community, anything they say is immediately taken as hostile. From the countless polls down on here from users, at least half of us are agnostic, half of the agnostics are non-believers and about a tenth of them are anti-theistic. I really don't get it.

I say that, because only those atheists are these people to sign their census data over to increase THEIR representation. Which in turn, increases political power via representation.

What do those people get in return? They get to have anything that they want to believe in stomped on. They are being publicly campaigned against and humiliated for political gain. Make no mistake; I would call bullshit on this no matter which faith/belief the perpetrators kept.

 

[TiefBlau]

In a way, I agree with these guys in the way that having less registered atheists gives religious groups more fodder to use against them, but really, if you want to declare yourself a devout follower of the Jedi code, do it.