Jedi Knight Now (Not) Officially a Religion

osiris writes: "The Register is reporting that being a Jedi Knight is now an official religion in the UK after the 2001 census conducted earlier this year. The final number of 'Jedi Knights' has not been confirmed yet as only about 95% of the census forms have been returned. As you could probably imagine, the Home Office is none too pleased. Apparently though, you can't get fined for lying about your religion in the census." Actually, according to the story, this gives the Jedi way no more official status than Plumbing would have if everyone put that down.

Comments

Re:None v. Atheist

[Reality Master 101]

Atheist: You take a definite position that there is no God (which ironically is actually a position of faith, but that's another debate).

Agnostic: You take the position that the existence of God is not knowable. This IMO is the most intellectually honest position.

None: I guess this means that you take absolutely no position at all on the subject.

Re:None v. Atheist

[efuseekay]

*sigh*, another statement of faith masquerading as an argument.

God has made himself known through many ways, and it behooves us to seek Him.

Please show scientifically testable/repeatable proof.

As for agnostics being lazy, you are accusing people who have spent a lot of time thinking about the issue and evaluating the evidence but came up with the an intellectually honest answer : "We don't have sufficient evidence to decide on whether God exists" of being lazy. I think that's a strawman argument.

I am an agnostic. I spend all my time seeking the Truth as a physicist. That's my job. And if I get lazy, my advisor will kick my butt. Perhaps you should widen your views about what constitutes "Truth" and what constitutes "Faith."

Feynman once said, "It's hard to sit on the Fence." Agnostics sit on the fence all the time, and Feynman's is right : it's not easy.

Learn from the prostitutes

[DaSyonic]

Things like this don't work. A while back, some woman decided to start a church for her bordello ('whore house') in which the 'followers' would enter the 'temple' and perform 'religous services' and upon leaving, would leave 'a charitable religous donation'. Obviously, it got shot down, and they spent some time in jail if I recall.

You can not create a religion that violates the law without a lot of precedent. For example, a group of Indians, I dont recall the tribe, but they are the only group who may use peyote legally. Why? It's their religion, and they've been doing it for hundreds of years. If you had been doing this for many years before the DMCA, and all these laws, you might stand a chance. Otherwise, better just spend your time writing your local representatives.

Re:The sad thing is...

[Rogerborg]

• None of the people who check it are actually Jedi, whether they say they are or not

Prove that anybody who puts down Buddhist has been reencarnated.

Prove that anyone who puts down Catholic suffers the consequences of original sin.

Kind of missing the point of belief, aren't you?