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 ;)

Re:Separation of Church and State

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFP or RTFA.

both clearly state that was an OPTIONAL field

Re:Separation of Church and State

[NanoGator]

"There is no reason the state needs to know my religion."

It's an optional question on a census, not a tax form.

NanoGator wins: FATALITY

Re:False information?

[paladin_tom]

Why not have a little fun?

Because in most countries, lying on your census is illegal. Hence the hubbub.

Re:I can't blame him

[SN74S181]

Oh, come on now. Christians don't claim that ordinary laypeople can turn water into wine. That was a miracle, and so unusual it was noted.

It's the hocus-pocus bunch who claim they can do 'Magick.'

Urban Legend

[gosand]

Snopes [snopes.com] has listed this for almost a year.

Urban Legend

[rubinson]

For those not reading the article (and to provide a little background), last year a hoax circulated throughout both the UK and Australia that if enough people marked "Jedi" on their census form, that it would become a nationally recognized religion. This was never true.

What made some people believe that it was true was that, in Britain, it was eventually revealed that "Jedi" was getting a specific response code assigned to it (e.g., people who wrote in "Jedi" as their response were getting assigned a value such as "746" for their religion). The fact that the "Jedi" responses were being recorded made some people believe that the hoax was true.

However, in many surveys, responses that pass a certain numerical threshold are often assigned a distinct numerical code. This doesn't actually mean anything; it's simply to aid in the tabulation of the results. For analysis purposes, "Jedi" was always going to be grouped into "N/A" or "Other" or "Refused to Answer" (I'm not realy sure which; depends upon how they want to deal with it).

All the details can be found here [snopes.com].

Re:Separation of Church and State

[N3WBI3]

The problem is my uninformed friend, bushes faith based is done on the same grounds as everyone else, if not its even harder.

An organization must demonstrate what it is doing for the community (drug counseling, food pantry, etc..) before it can recieve government dollars. This is more than many charities must do to recieve government dollars.

I am against the Bush measure because I dont trust the government to not use this money to pressure churches to tote the PC line later (like in canada where Christian Stations cant say Homosexuality is a sin on the air).

Re:I can't blame him

[Sc00ter]

You can believe in the force and not be a Jedi.. Jedi's have some powers, the ability to "move shit around the room" is one of them.

Saying your religion is "Jedi" is the same as listing your religion is "Cardinal"

Re:Separation of Church and State

[Chaswell]

I'll probably burn for this, but...

Scientology is clearly copyrighted AND considered a religion. Then again that wasn't exactly what you said, but I had to mention it.

And Scientology beats the hell out of Christians and Jedi's for looney bits!

Aboriginal religions, languages

[billstewart]

The 1996 .AU census specified 7 Christian groups, plus an "Other" fill-in-the-blank. The 2001 version adds Islam and Buddhism. I couldn't find any 2001 religion results on the site - I assume they're not done yet, though they've hit high-priority topics such as population and attendance at sporting events.... There weren't any reported Jedi in 1996 :-)

Neither the religion nor the language sections explicitly mention Aboriginal religions or languages, though about 7000 people wrote that in on the 1996 form, and a number of other people wrote in "Nature Religions", which may include some aboriginals as well as neo-pagans. The Ancestry section does include "Australian", and there is also an explicit question asking if you're an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and there are some specific instructions for Australian South Sea Islanders as well.

Re:John the baptist

[Rand Race]

And where do you get these little "facts" concerning the martyrs? From Paul of Tarsus and those writing after him of course. There is no record of Paul's martyrdom outside the Bible... not to mention his conversion. I have always questioned his appeal to the Emporor; first of all it declares his Roman citizenship, an extreme rarity among levantine jews of the time. Second of all, why not just be martyred on the spot? I have this sinking suspicion he got to Rome and spent the rest of his life under house arrest there as most othe appealates did.

The Magdelen Fragment is interesting, but please excuse me if I take the word of Dr. Carsten Thiede, a doctor of comparitive German literature, concerning its date and significance with a grain of salt. Klaus Wachtel, of the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, and Dr. Graham Stanton, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, have quite thouroughly demolished Dr. Thiede's dating of Papyrus 64. Here [askwhy.co.uk] is a good review of the criticisms of Dr. Theide's work.

No one claims Paul invented the religion, he just crafted it to fit a gentile audience. And in such crafting destroyed - in my and Dr. Maccabe's view - utterly the original intent of Jesus while paving the way for it's dominance over the latinate and hellenistic world.

Re:Separation of Church and State

[prismatic]

Atryn's post needs to get modded up. His interpretation is essentially what the First Amendment says about religion.

In addition to what he said, however, the government cannot legally create a program which specifically benefits secular organizations over sectarian ones, either. That would be discriminating against a religious org.

Jedi recognised in UK

[Martin S.]

Jedi was recognised in the recent UK census as a statically significant category.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001 /pdfs/secti on5part3.pdf (Page 18)

However what I found really interesting was some of the other choices in the ~150 different categories including:

Scientology
Nearly 100 different versions of Christianity.
Heathen, Atheist, Agnostic, Realist, Idealist, Rationalist, Humanist, Secularist.