Mark No Religion Australian 2011 Census

August 9 is Australian Census night

In February I blogged about the upcoming Census in many countries this year , and how many Humanist Societies such as the Scottish Humanist Society  did a Good without God campaign

In years past if you wanted to get somewhere in Australian politics you never mentioned religion, now thanks to John Howard it seems that we seemed to have taken the American route and it has become a part of the Australian political landscape. Most of this isn't obvious unless you really scrutinise the members of  Federal and State Government. It makes you wonder how Julia Gillard at first was an Atheist, but now has become a non-practising Baptist.
How much influence does religion have in Government? Lets make a list.

1. Chaplains...no real use except for buying votes from Christians.
2. State funding of religious schools.
3. Government refusal to have a Charity commission, only 1st world Gov not to have one.
4. No tax on profits on Church owned businesses, only 1st world Gov not to do this.
5. Church exemptions on anti-discrimination law.
6. No general inquiry into Church child abuse
7. Evangelical Religious Instruction in schools

Do you really want Global warming denier George Pell, giving "advice" the many Catholic people in the Liberal Party?

 

How about Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby, a friend to all Gay people everywhere /sarcasm

 When you say your Christian, than your giving these self elected spokesman more influence than they deserve.

It's time to take Religion out of Politics  http://www.censusnoreligion.org/




Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis. - Albert Ellis

The Australian Tax Armageddon cometh.

 

Australia is one of the very very few countries where you can a church or religious group can own a profit making business and there is no tax paid on those profits, to understand the issue I recommend reading this article in The Australian and this 2001 story from the 7:30 Report 

Access Ministries tries to shutdown Mike Stuchbery

                                                              

I've been very impressed how Mike Stuchbery has taken on the rather odious state supported  Access Ministries.

He was sent a letter from a lawyer about his deconstruction of another strange Access comic.
This is almost certainly what all the fuss is about

Today on his tumblr

GAGGED!

It’s been an interesting week. On Friday I received a letter from Moore’s Legal, regarding my posting of Access Ministries’ ‘Man Hunters’ graphic novel. I had posted it online to highlight what I thought was not suitable for ue with children, due to the violence, sexism and racism that filled the pages. You can find the letter here. Advice from colleagues and the pleading of my fiancee led to me removing the PDF and several images sourced from the comic that I had used for the purposes of criticising the text.



Today I logged on to Wordpress to find that my ability to post on my blog, ‘Mike Stuchbery’ had been disabled. This is presumably as a result of a DMCA notice served against Wordpress. I cannot post until Wordpress contacts me - which may be some time. In the meantime I’ve taken to Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr to continue the dialogue regarding Access Ministries, SRI and the influence of evangelicals in our public schools.



It’s clear that Access are playing hardball. I think I can guess why. This has nothing to do with copyright. It’s just the cheapiest and easiest route through which to try to shut me up. it’s certainly easier to prove than defamation or similar, and less costly. I’m certainly not making any money from their works. It’s all about flexing their muscle and making an example of someone amongst the clamour of opposition to the current SRI system. They don’t their material to see the public arena, not after the ‘bullying comic’ fiasco that made the frontpages of the Age. They’re frightened of the spotlight turned across their simplistic, unconsidered, culturally-insenstive and inappropriate curriculum materials.



I’ll be back posting on the blog soon. I’m getting advice on the best hosting that won’t be so quick to fold if Access decide to maintain the attempts to gag and silence me. In the meantime, keep the discussion flowing and keep calling on the Education Minister to provide the best outcome for kids.

Australia and the US have provisions for fair use or fair dealing in their copyright laws, and Mike has certainly been on the side of Review and Criticism. As ACCESS are keen to get their materials in front of Victorian children, they really do need to come under the tightest scrutiny

In Australia, the grounds for fair dealing are:


Research and study (section 40 Copyright Act 1968 (Cth))

Review and criticism (s41)

"Reporting the news" (s42)

Legal advice (although the federal Crown is deemed to own copyright in federal statutes, and the Crown in each State in state statutes). (s43)

Parody and Satire (with some exceptions) (s41A)


"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." — Salman Rushdie

Say NO to Chaplains

Dave the Happy Singer has created notochaplains.org This is to let those in power how much the general population of Australia, really don't want religious based evangelical helpers in our schools.

It's an expensive vote grabbing exercise, and an insult to the mainstream of Australia. 

The current church going population of Australia is about 7%, but the Federal government is falling over itself in letting these people having their own way. The Church run schools already get a huge handout of cash, now the State schools have to put up with this Christian interloper.

Dear Labour party, remember, this was started by the second PM ever to have lost his seat in an election, and you have been in the political wilderness for many years, for the precise reason that Keating forgot about mainstream Australia. Sucking up to minorities just doesn't work.


"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. " Bertrand Russell

Marjoe and the Religious Con trick

       

        Thanks to the Skepchick Rebecca Watson blogging about this movie. I remembered reading about this man "The World's Youngest Ordained Minister" Marjoe Gortner, in Hitchins "God is not Great", but I never followed it up even though I had the book on my desk.

  The movie is called "Marjoe", a 1972 Academy Award winning Documentary,  thanks to YouTube it's available for viewing here.  

 Marjoe was the son of two missionary parents, and as a child he was turned into a tiny Evangelical minister until he was about 16 and decided he had enough, and stopped. Then his father took what was remaining of the US$3Million (US$15million in 2011 money)that Marjoe had raised, and left.

The movie follows Marjoe as he makes his return to Ministry, and shows the  tricks used and events that the evangelicals use to suck cash from those taken in by these confidence tricksters.

While we are on simple con tricks, a good one is the Miracle Leg Lenghtening, it's been done in the past by AA Allen , it's currently a favourite in Denmark and in the USA. Starting with the legs slightly sideways and pulling the shoe slightly off the heel, makes one leg appear to be longer, or the other to be shorter. James Randi has exposed this trick a number of times.

A book about Marjoe is available on Amazon

"Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it." Charles Dickens

Census Matters so make it no religion

        During  2011,  Britain, Ireland, Canada and Australia are all going to have a census, The UK will have Census on 11th March, Ireland is 10th of April, Canada 10th May and Australia is 9th of August.

Last time I had a difficult choice...very difficult, I had to decided if I should put Jedi or not. Since I decided that I can't use the Force or and I don't  posses a Lightsaber, I put Pastafarian.

While many people think a census is just the government intruding and trying to find out all it can about it's citizens...well yes. that's true to a part.  The Government needs this information so it can provide services, roads, libraries (ok, forget the libraries in the UK) and for understanding what people do for work,health, age ranges, and how they travel. Among the questions asked is about your religion.

It's very simple just not to worry about this question, and think "Well, we have Christmas at home, or we were baptised" and then put Christian in the box without a second thought. If so, you have just given a small boost to Archbishops, lobbyist leaders and everyone who jumps up and down waving a book, and says god is on their side. Those religious leaders then get to say "I represent the views of  X% of the population" and this helps them persuade political leaders to maintain the undeserved privileges religions enjoy, and also to do what these religious want, not to do what is right for everyone.

Suggestions from the pulpit can sway votes, and what is the most important thing to politicians? Votes. It would be nice to think that doing the best for their country would be the most important thing...sadly no. Universally, reelection is more important than the public good

Australian results for those who are claiming no religion have been climbing steadily:-

1996: 16.6 per cent
2001: 15.5 per cent
2006: 18.7 per cent

In the 2006 census the top three responses for religious affiliation were Catholic (25.8%), Anglican (18.7%), and No Religion (18.7%). So the amount of people who are learning to think for themselves is increasing, we just need to give them a hint. 

This year the the Australian Atheist Foundation have launched their Census No Religion campaign.

The idea is to encourage those people to think, what do you really believe in now?  Really..Sunday School was a long time ago.


In the UK the Humanist Society have launched the Census Campaign  for the March 11 Census.

Again it's important to put NO RELIGION, not Jedi, not Atheist, and don't leave it blank. In the last Census over 390,000 people put Jedi, unfortunately this didn't change anything, or help anyone.                                                                      

Atheist Ireland have also launched "So be honest to Godless" in the Irish Census on Sunday 10 April.

From their site:-

In the last Irish Census, over a quarter of a million people either ticked the ‘No Religion’ box (186,000), or didn’t answer the question (70,000), or wrote in an answer that isn’t a religion (over 2,000). Overall, that’s about one person in every fifteen. On its own, the ‘No Religion’ figure is the second-largest group after Roman Catholics.

And we believe the real figure is much higher than that. The ‘No Religion’ figure has risen from 1,000 (in 1961), to 7,000 (in 1971), to 39,000 (in 1981), to 66,000 (in 1991), to 138,000 (in 2002) and 186,000 (in 2006). With even normal change, that figure should be higher now. And with the dramatic changes in Irish society since the last Census, the true figure may be much higher.

We hope that the Census results for 2011 will accurately reflect this. You can help to make this happen.

 I did find it rather surprising that No Religion came second in Ireland, I'm quite sure with all the fresh scandals, such as the Magdalene Laundries, and the amount of child rapists in the church, and how the church spent so much time and effort covering it up, it will grow higher than the 186,00 from 2006.


The Canadian Centre for Inquiry have called for those who are not religious to say so, on the next Census.  

This year the message is simple, put NO RELIGION.

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. -- Bertrand Russell,

The Swedish and Religious Education

         It came across Twitter today from the Suffolk Humanists & Secularists, that the Swedish where to make the teaching of Religion on the assumption that is factual, illegal.
Sadly this does not seem to be the case, it would be a great step forward for the human race if it was.
It was written originally in the Guardian newspaper from 2007.

I was certain I new someone from Sweden somewhere to ask if it was true or not, and asked Twitter, and the answer came from Sin Trenton.

I'm sure he wouldn't mind me cutting and pasting it here :-

As always, the answer is not a simple yes and no.
The new law for schools as of August 2010 basically states that undervisning (‘lecturing’, the actual classes) shall be neutral, utbildning (‘education’, programmes, the school’s general profile) doesn’t have to be.

Det står skolorna fritt att “anordna andakter, bönestunder eller annan form av religionsutövning till exempel fördjupning i den egna trosläran som konfirmationsläsning”. Men de “konfessionella inslagen ska liksom i fristående skolor vara frivilliga för barnen.”

Translated: The schools may decide to “hold worship, prayers or other form of religious practice such as deeper studies in the own dogma, as part of confirmation studies. ” But the “confessional parts, shall, also in private schools, be voluntary for the children.”

It is stressed that it must be voluntary for students to participate and that it should not take place within the frame of regular lectures.
So you need to be brave as a seven years old to refuse going into the chapel or to memorise Psalms, Bible verses, Qu’ran suras, etc.

Further; “…grundläggande demokratiska värderingar och de mänskliga rättigheterna som utgör utgångspunkten för skolans värdegrund måste omfattas utan inskränkningar även av skolor med konfessionell inriktning”.

Translated: “… fundamental democratic values and the human rights that make up the starting point for the school’s value foundation must be included without limitations even by schools with confessional profiles”.
But that’s about it, actually.
The basic problem is that the minister and his “People’s Party The Liberals” want to smack down on Islamic schools, while not alienating their Christian Democrat coalition buddies, who has a large group of various Christian sects with their confessional schools, I’d say.

I believe that religion should be totally separated from the state. That's not the way it is today, not even in Sweden. :- Bjorn Ulvaeus 

I love Sweden. The entire world should be like Sweden. They all like to drink and get naked, and the women are hot. I can't think of a better nation on the planet. :- Drew Curtis