Dear Spencer,

I disagree with your view that several types of 'No religion' are actually religions, and point out the following problems with it:

1. Secularism is by definition belief in the political notion of separation of church and state. The US founding fathers held deist religious beliefs while holding to the political doctrine of secularism. As did the Christian founders of Australia. Thus, secularism cannot be a religion as it refers to religion - it would be self referential in wanting to separate the church and state from the separation of church and state. The concept is incoherent.

2. It's similarly incongrous to claim secularism is at odds with Section 116 of the Constitution - which guarantees secularism.

3. Your argument seems like a transparent attempt to co-opt the views of others into categories which make the Census result look better for Christians. You cannot just arbitrarily decide for others whether they regard themselves as religious or not. That's up to them, not you.

4. Australia laws tend to regard it as involving some sort of supernatural entity. This is how it was defined when Scientology achieved tax free status. This is why ethics and philosophy cannot be taught at the same time as fundamentalist religious instruction in QLD Schools.

5. People are entitled to say they have no religion, they are humanists, they are atheists, they are agnostic or they beleive in flying spaghetti monsters. None of these receive tax free status, they don't receive funding for RI, or for providing irreligious chaplains to schools, exemptions to anti-discrimination law, and nor are they thumping their copy of 'The God Delusion' in demand of these things. Most secular people are united in wanting an end ot the conspicuous privileging of outdated and largely irrelevent Christian religious beliefs in our society.

'No religion' will outstrip Catholicism to become the top denomination in Australia following the Census. The amount of Christians will be outnumbered for the first time. Hopefully, this will shift the balance towards a more religion-neutral understanding of secularism in our country.

//I put two cups of mixed fruit into a saucepan and pour a couple cups of fruit juice over it. Then I sift self-rising flour as I stir it and then put in the oven to bake for a couple of hours.

These are common ingredients for a fruit cake.//

That's your recipe for fruit cake? Gods, who taught you to cook?

//But when it is baked, I don't want to name it for what it is. I call it a non-cake, a furphy cake.//

Well, I can't say I blame you. But I think you should be honest and name it for what it is: a bloody awful mockery of a proper fruit cake.

I read no further. If man can't be arsed to do enough research into actual fruit cake recipes to make his analogy plausible, the rest of the article is bound to be rubbish.

@ttbn well as they say better to seem a fool then to remove doubt...

I refereed to the temperature absolute zero you fool.

Still can't shake the feeling you're related to Runner.

ttbn,

Who are all these people who appear to think they suddenly know all about religion? I don’t see them.

<<Suddenly everybody knows all about religion, including the atheists? Come on!>>

I do hope it’s at least the atheists, though. They do, after all, tend to know more about religion than theists.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/09/28/130191248/atheists-and-agnostics-know-more-about-bible-than-religious

<<As for the census, I'll be putting Christian, because you can bet your bottom dollar that Muslims will be putting in Muslim…>>

And how would putting yourself down as ‘Christian’ be any different to marking ‘No religion’, apart from the fact that lobby groups like the ACL will be able to use your claimed affiliation to lobby against important issues such as abortion rights and stem cell research?

Putting ‘No religion’ does not imply an indifference to Islam, or any other religion for that matter.

It appears you fell for the Christian scare campaign last census in which it was claimed that Mosques will spring up everywhere if ‘No religion’ is marked, but this is a non sequitur.

<<You bloody fools.>>

You have not demonstrated that anyone here, apart from yourself, is a fool.

Hi Shadow Minister,

Hey, that solemn ritual sounds like my kind of religion ! How do you do the Benediction ?

Joe

LM.

It sucks.