When I attempt the fraught task of putting self to paper this census, I’ll be muttering an aimless prayer before reluctantly crossing ‘no religion’. … I fear my X may be hijacked for irreligious — that is, anti-religious — purposes.
Michael Collett, ABC News
Last night, Australians dutifully completed paperwork for the Australian Government as part of the 5-yearly national census. (Or they would have, had they actually received census papers like they were meant to — but that’s a personal grumble.) One of the most contentious questions, as always, asked about religious beliefs.
In the last census, many Australians without religious beliefs took to ticking the ‘other’ box, and writing in their own fictitious faiths — Jedi (of Star Wars fame) and pastafarian (those who believe in the ‘flying spaghetti monster’ in the sky). This time, atheists cautioned that such answers, while perhaps amusing in their own way, actually distorted national statistics (by biasing upwards the number of Australians reported as holding religious beliefs). However, as Michael Collett writes, there are also degrees of religious ‘disbelief’. Some, like Collett, simply don’t believe in God, but are also agnostic — they don’t know one way or the other whether He exists or not. Others are devout (if one can use that description) atheists who are actively anti-religious. This latter group has an interest in boosting the ‘no religion’ answer on census forms to try to attack and discredit religion.
I am certainly a non-believer, and value a broadly secular society. Holding ‘no religion’ is quite distinct from being actively opposed to religion. And in a liberal civil society, that is a difference itself worth recognising.
