At 08:33 AM 22/2/99, Trudy and Rod Bray wrote:
>I don't think he said that 30% were atheists, Peter, in fact, the
>percentage of those is actually
>very small.
The last census doesn't indicate that 30% are atheists.
It does, however indicate that 16.6% of people indicated that they followed
no religion in 1996 and that a further 9% didn't answer the question.
Moreover the number of people indicating no religion had grown by some 35%
since the previous census compared with, for a example, a 2.9% fall in the
number of people identifying as Anglican.
If the same growth/fall rates have been sustained since 1996 there are now
far more atheists / agnostics in Australia than there are Anglicans.
The number of people indicating that they pursue no religion vastly exceeds
the number of people who identify as Muslim , Hindu etc (three times the
number in fact). There are more people indicating "no religion" than all
of the other christian groups combined apart from Anglican and Catholic.
After Anglicans and Catholics, people without a religion made up the third
largest group in the Australian community in 1996. I suspect that by now
only the Catholics outnumber them (us).
(source ABS Web data on religious affiliation.)
My own view is that the preamble should state that we are a secular state,
which recognises the freedom of people to either believe, or not believe,
as their personal conscience dictates.
Cheers
Rod
(who is in the middle of a bit of a brawl about whether religious education
should be given the prominence which it is at the local Victorian state
school!)
Rod Hagen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hurstbridge, Victoria, Australia
WWW http://www.netspace.net.au/~rodhagen
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