NPG: Faith and Church
Here's a bad start to 2007: Faith and Church: Portraits by Don McCullin, National Portrait Gallery, Room 40, 3 February to 7 May 2007. The Brit. (Art) Establishment is continuing its daft policy of trying to persuade us that religion is the hope of Humanity. To this end, NPG commissioned Don McCullin to photo England's top 10 religious leaders from various faiths. The result is a boring collection of black and white photos of irrelevant old duffers. Just before Christmas, I was woken by a voice telling me that the latest research shows that 4 out of 5 Britons have no faith (Classic FM News). So, we improved in 2006 from 75% without faith to 80%. Of the 20% still clinging to outmoded faiths, most are elderly or women. So what happened to democracy? Why is a minority still trying to ram nutty religion down the throats of the majority?
posted by Unknown @ 1.1.07
2 comments
2 Comments:
According to the 2001 census, more than 70 per cent of respondents identified themselves as Christians. We may be nutty, but we are the majority.
Hi, Alan
You're talking 2001 census. I'm talking the latest research findings: 2006. When you think of all the religious butchery that's gone on in recent years, it could be that a lot of people have recently lost their faith through disillusionment, but I think there's more to it than that.
Don't forget you're required by law to fill in all the boxes in a census form. So what do you do when you hit the box marked "religion"? If you leave it blank, you're in trouble. But neither "atheist" nor "agnostic" is a religion! So what do you put in the box? I've been getting away with "atheist", but I guess the majority of unbelievers enter into the box the religion they were brought up in, in order to complete the form. So C of E gets falsely entered. This is a classic case of a questionnaire constraining people to give it the biased information it seeks, rather than the truth.
Give people a simple question: Do you have a faith? YES/NO. 80% of repondents in the UK are replying No. (75% in an earlier study this year by an American University, which gave people a choice between Darwinism or Creationism. If you're a genuine Christian, Muslim or Jew, you must answer Creationism.) These findings demonstrate that the UK census is totally out of touch with reality when it comes to religion.
Islam is now the second largest religion in Britain, with only 1.5 million Muslims. Care to tell me where Latter Day Saints, Methodists, Catholics, Episopalians etc come in the league table?
In my neighbourhood there is only one C of E school left. There are 4 Jewish schools and 2 Catholic schools. Our one and only grammar school is full of Asians, who, at a guess, are mainly Muslims.
Christians, a 70% majority? No way. The census is either badly out of date or produced false findings back in 2001. As somebody who has been trained to create questionnaires, I'm confident the 2001 census findings are false, for the reasons I've given you.
Lastly, don't forget that the UK Establishment puts out Christian propaganda. (One reason is that our politicians have to swear an oath of allegience to HM the Queen, who is the titular head of the C of E!)The survey I heard on Classic FM News wasn't reported by that pillar of the UK Establishment BBC News! Its big statistic was that "The Vicar of Dibley" was the top TV show this Christmas! A little bias here, maybe?
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