Figure that most people under 50 in the Great White North never set foot in church, synagogue, mosque, whatever (and looking at the stats, and actually attendance rates, that seems to be the case); figure that religion is dying all across the nation (except for immigrants, which again, according to the stats, is actually the case); figure that your average joe probably knows more about the Star Wars trilogy than he does about any actual religion, and that the morality in the films probably has more influence on what people do in day-to-day life than what some preacher says, and it’s hardly a shock that 20,000 Canadians said they’re Jedis.
a) The fact that even one person declared themself a member of the Jedi religion makes it an officially recognized religion.
b) The statement isn’t even lying. Your age is a given number, and your race is set as well. The number of people in your house, etc. etc are all defined. If you are 24 and say you’re 38, you’re lying. But your religion is your choice, and it can be anything you want it to be. Frankly, those of us that find religion a bit silly find claiming the Jedi version to be refreshing and accurate.
Has anybody ever figured out what “officially recognized religion” means in the first place?
Do even the self-proclaimed Jedi have any idea what that means? I mean, in most countries, religions don’t have to be “recognized.” They just exist.
Hey, I understand the fun of screwing with questionaires (when I was in high school, a lot of us enjoyed checking “other” for ethnicity, and entering weird answers, merely to be a pain) or standardized tests. But we were just being typical teenage wise guys. We certainly didn’t expect any payoff- our only “reward” was knowing that some poor, underpaid clerical worker was sighing in exasperation or groaning at our bad jokes.
But we never thought for a second that Wookies or Corellians wuld ever be recognized as an ethnic group (though… if enough of us were Wookies, maybe we could have demanded affirmative action!0.
Come to think of it, isn’t “fucktwat” pretty redundant? I mean, that is basically the purpose of genitals, right? If someone called me a “fuckdick” I’d probably respond, “Yes, that is what I do with my penis. It’s also a pissdick. And that about sums up all it’s intended functions.”
Just to pick a nit (and be a sanctimonious windbag) with the OP, there are people who might actually honestly put ‘undetermined’ as their gender identity.
How ‘invasive’ can a census possibly be? So what if it discovers that 20% of a country is Jewish or that 50% of people eat takeaways more than 4 times a week.
How does this ‘invade’ your privacy??
Having done a lot of research, censuses (censi?) are a crucial tool in making connections between whatever you are studying and the general population.
If government is saying that we need to put more money into schooling for the under 5s but the census shows that the population bulk are teenagers, we can argue against government policies. Or if government says that only 5% of women are unemployed but the census tells us that many women are in parttime employment and want to be fulltime or are in underpaid fulltime jobs we have something to fight government with (even though the government runs the census!!).
This benefits you in the long term. Invasion of privacy my arse - get over your ‘I have a right to not wear my seat belt’ issues.
Not sure how knowing that 20,000 Canadians classify themselves as Jedi, will be of any use?
Didn’t the Jedi religion win recognition in the U.K.? I thought I’d read an article about it several months back. I don’t quite know what to think of it. If it works for them, and they don’t trample my rights in the practice of it then I’ll let them be.
I try to follow the idea “Mock not the religion of another.” It’s parapharased, I’ll try to get it’s exact wording later.
Well, I found a page with part of the article I remembered reading a few months back. Note, that Rueters is the author, and CNN the original source. I can’t find it on CNN, I’m going to try Rueters next, but for now. Link
You might find some of the comments interesting too.
The only reasonable government need for a census is to determine representation and to allow for reasonably accurate demographics for planning services loads for the next 10 years. Anything beyond number of people in household and age of each is unnecessarily nosy.
How is it possible to prove that someone “lied” about their religious beliefs? If I want to call my house the Second Church of Ass Crack, make my self the Pope of my one-member church, then give myself no official duties, who is the government to argue with me?
Anyone who takes that Jedi stuff too seriously really is a dork, though.
Not necesarilly. Collecting different types of data can help the evaluation of other problems. Race, religion, and income are important census questions in that they can show if particular groups are discriminated against. Additionally, as there are different religous practices, those demographics are important in planning the types of services offered. For example, you have to know how many Jewish children there are in order to plan what percentage of school lunches need to be kosher.
The “Jedi” label is an important one for population planners as well. The Jedi religion slows population growth. 39 year old virgins don’t produce children.
What percentage of school lunches need to be kosher? Why does the school need to know how many lunches need to be kosher five-ten years in advance? This would appear to be micromanagement, something that could be taken care of on an individual basis. Parent goes to principal and tells him that little Moishe needs a kosher lunch. Principal makes a note that he sends to the school nutritionist. The nutritionist takes care of it. In predominantly Jewish neighborhoods (and you don’t need a census to figure out whether a given school has a primarily Jewish population or not), the default lunches would probably be kosher. You don’t need the census to figure this out.
What you do need the census for is to figure out how many school-age children a given district has coming up in the next 10 years and plan new building projects or teacher hirings accordingly. Likewise with senior services. How many newly eligible senior citizens will pass the threshold in the next decade? Better add another three vans to the Municipal Senior Transport fleet next year.
Part of the reason that the Census (in the US, anyway) has mushroomed in size is the perception that the government should do things for people based on percentage point differences in population of a particular religion or a particular race. If there were a “sexual orientation” question on the census (which I don’t know as I’ve never been a head of household in a census year yet), I’d leave it blank, no matter how much it would help to gather discrimination data, because the government doesn’t have any need to know how much discrimination happens, IMO. Of any kind. Equal opportunity legislation is good, in my mind, but not the kind that requires the government to keep up with the numbers of gays hired, fired, or how much we make. One of the great traps we’ve run into in the last few decades is micromanagement legislation. Pass a law that says one can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Don’t pass a law that says that median gay income must be $x0,000. Don’t pass a law that says 10% of employees in companies employeeing more than 50 people need to be gay. And other than that, I can’t think of a reason for the government to need to know whether one is black, asian, gay, straight, male, female, Baptist, or Left-Footian.
Jokesters Evangelical Denomination of The Illiterati
you choose… either way dumbasses are dumbasses.
people who do this as a joke, need to find another forum for their comedic endeavours. Maybe try stand-up, however, I’ll tell you to sit down.
people who do this to annoy the census, need to annoy some real people and get their asses kicked.
people who do this out of love for Star Wars need to calm down with their hardcore love of all StarWars and get a life outside the conventions.
people who are just plain “thinkdicks” or “fucktwats” can do whatever they want, sooner or later someone will teach them the lessons they need to learn.
'nuff said by me…
oh yea, I am not the high priest of the Church of Fucktard, I am the Pope.
and please someone explain to me the comedic value of this “prank” in simple terms since I am the Pope of Fucktardism.
