I think a lot of people will get upset with the idea that “I don’t know if God exists, but if they do then we’re already saved”. The only rule we need is “Be excellent to each other”.
So let’s do it!
Do you think the US government will give us tax exemption?
It isn’t just for the government’s use. I’m don’t know Australian censuses work, but Statistics Canada makes all census data (anonymized and aggregated) open for anyone to access.
Let’s say you’re a non-profit trying to support a bill that members of a certain religion wouldn’t like, but atheists would. You can use this information to maximize your resources towards a “get-out-the-vote” campaign in communities with higher atheist populations, and devote fewer resources to those with higher populations of that religion.
Or your health care might find an increase in orally-transmitted diseases in Catholics, compared to Anglicans (or vice versa), based on how they receive the Eucharist.
Unless there’s some reason why the public shouldn’t know what their own demographics are, I don’t see why it should be excluded from the census.
That’s even worse IMHO. At least the government is tasked with being non-discriminatory but other organizations who might use the data are NOT. If you want to open a restaurant, but would prefer to serve as few of “those kind” as possible, the data could inform your decision on where to open it. Once could easily imagine this being used to “redline” neighborhoods by bankers and insurers…
That’s nice in theory. Doesn’t work as well in practice.
I find their lack of faith in their lack of faith… disturbing.
Really? This is the news from Australia you are blogging about? Not Australia’s on-going abuse of refugees to deter further refugees from seeking asylum, as reported by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch yesterday?
They need some Jedi cause they be real Sith right now.
When you say that, do you mean that the actual practice of people being equally free to any religion does not work, or that in practice people are not really free to do so?
Hopefully this CensorShip will hit a niceburg.
I apologize in advance for the bad joke, I was already typing and my backspace key is broken.
At least a problem that won’t happen in France.
[quote=“nimelennar, post:12, topic:82709, full:true”]The information “What religion is this person” isn’t going to the government; it’s anonymized
[/quote]
Not this year, it isn’t 
So if you put “Other: Atheist” does that count as a religion? As opposed to the “No Religion” option which you could quite legitimately choose if you are a theist. Seems like any numbers could be misleading confusing faith with religion anyway. I mean they even give “Humanism” as an example of a religion you could list. So even taking this totally seriously it’s quite reasonable to expect genuine atheists to list what’s counted as a religion according to the census.
—Which is why I think it is easier to not gather information that can be used to discriminate than it is to prevent that information from being used to discriminate.
First they come for the Jedi. Then they come for the Pastafarians.
This is the Australian census that is asking for names to be attached to each form and encouraging online submissions (if your browser can handle it). But don’t worry, your personal info could NEVER get ID’d back to you or be compromised…
Say that members of a certain religious demographic were regularly denied employment and largely confined to ghettos. If you have aggregated census data showing this, you could use it to figure out how to craft policy and direct resources to solve the problem. Without that data you might never be able to prove there was a problem in the first place.
We all just go round the PM’s place and tell him ourselves:
We were just talking about a Church of the Gleeful Agnostic (or something similarly named with a ‘happy to be clueless and awesome’ spirit over in the Satanism thread (we’re weird here, but you knew that))
We’d have many of our services in animal shelters, and one of our beliefs would be ‘neither dogma nor catma’ (thanks @teknocholer !). And we’d generally have a ‘we have no clue and don’t even try or pretend, because that doesn’t even make sense to worry about… puppies are neat though’ sort of attitude.
And of course we’d gleefully ride the ‘Church’ bit for all the nifty benefits and to steal all the teapot agnostics and groovy atheists from the other Churches and such! 
The disturbing thing is that the far right has now pounced on the idea and are encouraging people to list the religion that they were born into so that “Australia does not become a Muslim country”.
the shear level of stupidity is mind-boggling.
And equally important: to determine the effectiveness of your attempts to solve the problem. Even if there are so many confounding variables that the links might be tenuous at best.
