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Australia Oppresses Jedi
eberry writes "Despite over 70,000 respondents (.37% of the population) replying "Jedi" to an optional faith question on Australia's census, it will not become a recognized religion According to CNN "Australian officials say respondents could face a $1,000 fine for supplying false information. Citing, and I quote, "...people of a particular religious affiliation do not provide the correct information, certain facilities might not be built that otherwise would be."
Personally I find their lack of faith disturbing." And I find the fact that this is on CNN even more so ;)
Why not have a little fun?
Because in most countries, lying on your census is illegal. Hence the hubbub.
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
Oh, come on now. Christians don't claim that ordinary laypeople can turn water into wine. That was a miracle, and so unusual it was noted.
It's the hocus-pocus bunch who claim they can do 'Magick.'
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
For those not reading the article (and to provide a little background), last year a hoax circulated throughout both the UK and Australia that if enough people marked "Jedi" on their census form, that it would become a nationally recognized religion. This was never true.
What made some people believe that it was true was that, in Britain, it was eventually revealed that "Jedi" was getting a specific response code assigned to it (e.g., people who wrote in "Jedi" as their response were getting assigned a value such as "746" for their religion). The fact that the "Jedi" responses were being recorded made some people believe that the hoax was true.
However, in many surveys, responses that pass a certain numerical threshold are often assigned a distinct numerical code. This doesn't actually mean anything; it's simply to aid in the tabulation of the results. For analysis purposes, "Jedi" was always going to be grouped into "N/A" or "Other" or "Refused to Answer" (I'm not realy sure which; depends upon how they want to deal with it).
All the details can be found here.
An organization must demonstrate what it is doing for the community (drug counseling, food pantry, etc..) before it can recieve government dollars. This is more than many charities must do to recieve government dollars.
I am against the Bush measure because I dont trust the government to not use this money to pressure churches to tote the PC line later (like in canada where Christian Stations cant say Homosexuality is a sin on the air).
Saying your religion is "Jedi" is the same as listing your religion is "Cardinal"
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Neither the religion nor the language sections explicitly mention Aboriginal religions or languages, though about 7000 people wrote that in on the 1996 form, and a number of other people wrote in "Nature Religions", which may include some aboriginals as well as neo-pagans. The Ancestry section does include "Australian", and there is also an explicit question asking if you're an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and there are some specific instructions for Australian South Sea Islanders as well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Atryn's post needs to get modded up. His interpretation is essentially what the First Amendment says about religion.
In addition to what he said, however, the government cannot legally create a program which specifically benefits secular organizations over sectarian ones, either. That would be discriminating against a religious org.
Brian Voils
"A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students."
Jedi was recognised in the recent UK census as a statically significant category.1 /pdfs/secti on5part3.pdf (Page 18)
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census200
However what I found really interesting was some of the other choices in the ~150 different categories including:
Scientology
Nearly 100 different versions of Christianity.
Heathen, Atheist, Agnostic, Realist, Idealist, Rationalist, Humanist, Secularist.