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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 ;)
They need to know if they should build the Death Star or not!
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.
-BrentApparently they will haev to prove they are, or at least were members of the Jedi Relegion. Perhaps a questionare Would be appropriate..
1. Have you ever tried to convince someone that the driods in your possession were NOT in fact the driods they were looking for?
2. Did you ever have a crush on Princess Leah but had a strange feeling the cosmos would never let it happen.. Not even realizing she was your sister?
3. While drivign down the street at night have you ever turned off your headlights and driven using only the force? did you live?
Of course if it were me and they were asking me to proove I was of the Jedi faith, Id insist they make the christians prove they were christians.. Do you love thy neighbor even when they are mowing the lawn at 5am on a sunday.. Etc..
-Jason
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.
You don't need to fill out our silly forms.
"All you need to do is count how many people live here."
All we need to do is count how many people live here.
"Just move along."
I'll just move along.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
What if you just made something up for the form? What if you put "Linusian", "Openus Sourcinerous", "United Temple of The Perl", "Orthodox Geek", etc.....?
Table-ized A.I.
Or are you saying that we should have a federally mandated atheistic state? That would worry me as much as dictating any particular religious faith. Religion is part of society, and society creates the government. It's chilling to think of it your way - a government that dictates the society.
--
Evan (no reference)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien