The problem with that argument, or rather assumption, is that it proves too much.

“religion amounts to worldview in action.”

Everything – every human action – amounts to worldview in action. If you go up the shop to buy some milk, that, according to your definition, is “religion”.

If religion is praxis with a view to “all reality” then it includes all human action without distinction.

This means your theory is wrong. And useless.

Who cares what your religion is and the government shouldn't care enough to put it in the census.

It doesn't matter why you do what you do. It only matters what you do. So long as you abide by the law and do not impinge on another's rights then it is totally irrelevant what goes on in your head.

Religion is just a way of organising your perceptions of reality in your head to try and make some sense of what you see and hear and feel. Those who cannot do this to their own satisfaction take on someone else's way of organising it all. They take on a religion or philosophy but it does not matter how you make sense of it. It only matters when you try and force others into behaving in accord with the way you have perceived the world and made sense of it.

Putting your religion on the census form just tells us that you are incapable of making sense of life and have resorted to some pre-packaged explanation for it all. That is not something you should be sharing with the rest of society.

Labelling "No Religion" as a religion is like calling baldness a hair colour or regarding "not collecting stamps" as a hobby.

Religion is the belief in a supreme deity (or deities) with the addition of a formal organisational hierarchy and a set of common beliefs.

However somebody can have no religion and yet not be called an atheist.

An atheist simply does not believe in a supreme deity but one can accept the existence of an intelligence behind the creation of the universe while rejecting the man-made myths that try to explain it.

In the same way a seagull sitting on the Opera House can't understand what's happening inside, the human mind that cannot fully comprehend eternity or imagine anything beyond three dimensions may not even be capable of comprehending what is labelled as "God".

A collection of pre-Iron Age stories by people who didn't even know what germs were to explain the unknown is now a basis for modern life and an excuse for abberrant behaviour.

Capturing and classifying God in human terms is much the same as prehistoric cave painters who thought painting images of animals bestowed power over them for a successful hunt.

It's not a take-it-or-leave-it situation and a relatively unimportant Census question.

The correct category would be "no conscious religion" as nothing and nobody can exist without religion.

However, as Phanto just mentioned, there is no need to share the fact of one's being conscious or otherwise of their religion with the rest of society - but then we shouldn't have to share any information about ourselves with the rest of society anyway.

BTW, the reason this question is asked in the census is in order to tell government how to split our tax-money among the different churches.

Everyone has a religion, even those with no belief in a deity!

And in which case they have evolution, science or big money, the sun, a flat earth, politics and the party, wall street, the motor car, freedom or control or raw untrammelled power?

Everybody has a religion?
Alan B.

An interesting comment, Mr gear.

<<An overt rationalist such as Hugh Harris could be licking his chops over this new placement of the category.>>

I take it, then, that you would rather tuck it away so that the country appears more religious than it is by people just mindlessly selecting whatever’s on their birth certificate, as has happened in the past?

<<BUT is a person not practising religion if the worldview is identified as rationalism, secularism, capitalism, socialism, atheism or environmentalism?>>

Atheism isn’t a worldview. It’s a rejection of religious claims as unsupported by the evidence, and disbelief is its only tenet. You can bend, stretch, and twist definitions all you like. Hold your tongue a certain way and tilt your head when you read them if you must. But all the sophistry in the world won’t make atheism a religion.

I didn’t bother reading the rest of the article. When you can’t even grasp such basic definitions and concepts, or are dishonest enough to try to fit a square peg in a round hole, then there is no point in continuing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

As rache pointed out, atheism is as much a religion as baldness is a hair colour. Engaging in sophistry to make it seem otherwise is dishonest. It is effectively a way of saying, “Well, our worldviews may be limited by dogma, but so are yours.”

No, they’re not.