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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 ;)
There is no reason the state needs to know my religion.
They should not even ask for this information. It is irrelevant to any aspect of the governments purpose.
My tax money shouldn't be used to provide any religious services to anyone.
I presume that people who write Jedi on their census form are most agnostics and other non-religious people who would have otherwise not answered at all on the census. So the Australian religious budget would not go to them to begin with. Why not have a little fun? It doesn't hurt anything, except for a few hours for the census department to remove the figures from there total.
Now if a person from a legitimate religion answered Jedi, and therefore has caused less dollars to go to his religious organization, I say he gets what he deserves.
-BrentOf course the US government acts (and allocates resources) based on faith beliefs of citizens. The US is a representative republic, and so the actions of government reflect, to some extent at least, the will of the people. For many people, their faith beliefs affect their wills more than any other single factor.
The US is also properly a constitutional republic, and to the extent that we pay attention to the US Constitution, governmental action is limited. For example, the Constitution would obviously forbid establishing the Lutheran Church as the official church of the country, even if 90% of the citizens were Lutheran. However, it does not keep Lutherans from lobbying for laws that fit their particular views.
(Note: I just picked Lutheran out of a hat as an example. Don't read more into it than that.)
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Their are practices and beliefs associated with Druidism and the Wiccan faith. A person can't reasonably _be_ a Druid just by calling himself one momentarily on a piece of paper, any more than it's reasonable to claim to be a Catholic while taking a page from the feminist movement and worshipping Athena as the goddess of Wisdom.
People claim to be religions and do things contrary to them all the time. Does that make the Catholic who gets an abortion guilty of commiting fruad on their census by claiming to be a Catholic even though they don't strictly adhere to doctrine? Or the Mormon who drinks? Or the Druid that eats meat and hunts? etc etc etc. That is why we have freedom of religion in the US, so someones concepts for a religion don't have to apply to mine, then again the government doesn't fund/build churchs here either.
My point is you are singleing out Jedi's becuase it offends you, and not seeing the bigger picture that this "fraud" as you state it goes on ALL the time.
If you had to prove your religious beliefs existed, say goodbye to all organized religion.
Not that it would be a bad thing.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I don't believe in a deity. I respect people who do because I'm a respectful person, but I think their views are ludicrous. Asking my religion (optionally or not) is like asking me what type of dragons I believe in - it's not that I happen not to believe, I don't believe because there's nothing to believe in. (pauses for response from the Draco-Human Anti-Defamation League)
So if asked a bizarre question about religion, dragons or anything else, I'd feel perfectly entitled to put a bizarre answer. Cargo cults believed that planes were linked to God, why shouldn't I think a film is?
And there is another small group of nitwits in the US that thinks that the establishment clause in the first amendment means that the Government can't even mention anything remotely religious. Don't you ever get tired of screaming "Separation of Church and State!" (a phrase that never appears in the Constitution, btw).
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Yes, and I get just as tired of the hearing ill-informed religious zealots crying over the threat of the phrase, "under god," being removed from the pledge, when that phrase was added after the fact by President Eisenhauer. Try saying the pledge without those two words. I think that the phrase, "one nation indivisible," sounds more meainingful anyway, and doesn't alienate any portion of the public whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Atheist, or otherwise.