Non religious, Atheist, New Atheist, Humanist, Mammon worshipper, Buddhist

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Why have you just ignored the correction I gave you? Oh well, ‘twas ever thus I guess. 

Apart from the fact that the ONS would consider your suggestions in the light of whether it will fulfil their requirements for data gathering…

Again, the ONS does what it’s told to do. The point though is what others would do with false positives to justify their subsequent faith-based policies.

…and in the light of the humanist goal of yielding accurate information for policies in line with their goals,…

Again, whether or not more accurate data would be in line with their goals is neither here nor there. More accurate data is a desirable outcome in its own right. Why would you disagree with that?

I am truly sorry for getting involved in your game of Fantasy Census question setting.

I was just explaining to you how and why your pro-religious bias is causing you to defend the indefensible, albeit dishonestly and evasively.

Look, I’ll try again: do you think it’s better for the census to produce more accurate data or less accurate data? 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Why have you just ignored the correction I gave you? Oh well, ‘twas ever thus I guess. 

Again, the ONS does what it’s told to do. The point though is what others would do with false positives to justify their subsequent faith-based policies.

Again, whether or not more accurate data would be in line with their goals is neither here nor there. More accurate data is a desirable outcome in its own right. Why would you disagree with that?

I was just explaining to you how and why your pro-religious bias is causing you to defend the indefensible, albeit dishonestly and evasively.

Look, I’ll try again: do you think it’s better for the census to produce more accurate data or less accurate data?

The ONS do what they are told but not obviously by people like yourself. This is probably because your wording does not yield relevant information and therefore it matters not if irrelevant information is collected accurately.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

The ONS do what they are told but not obviously by people like yourself.

Meaning?

This...

What's "this"?

... is probably because your wording does not yield relevant information and therefore it matters not if irrelevant information is collected accurately.

Utterly incomprehensible. Did that mean something in your head when you typed it?

I'll try again: do you think it’s better for the census to produce more accurate data or less accurate data?

It's a simple enough question isn't it?   

[jeremyp]

The problem otherwise is that it's already error prone because it's biased toward false positives for religious belief.

So you say, but I had no trouble reading the question and selecting "no religion" from the options displayed to me.

The question, as stated, is a bit ambiguous and I can't criticise Vlad too harshly because I can sort of see his point of view. I stopped believing in God when I was twenty, but I carried on regarding myself as being in the C of E for several years after that. If  C of E had been an option in the 1991 census, I might have ticked that option, instead of "no religion".

Given the alleged origin of the question, maybe a better one would have been "Are you a Muslim?"

[bluehillside Retd.]

Jeremy,

So you say, but I had no trouble reading the question and selecting "no religion" from the options displayed to me.

No doubt, but lots of people it seems do. This from the article Vlad linked to:

“A recent YouGov poll for Humanists UK asked respondents the same religion question as the census and then fired off additional inquiries to those who selected Christian. Fifty-nine per cent said they selected it because they were christened. Forty four per cent said it was because one of their parents was Christian. Clearly many thought of it as a cultural category.

When it came to the actual contents of the Christian faith – the “belief” part of religion – the results plummeted. Just 34 per cent said it was because they “believe in the teachings of Christianity”. Only 27 per cent said they “believe that Jesus Christ was a real person who died and came back to life, and was the son of God”. When it came to practice, the numbers fell even further. Most people who ticked Christian either never attended a place of worship or did so less than once a year.”

The point here is first that the way a question is framed heavily influences the answer it produces, and second that policy makers will rely on the false positives the census as it’s currently framed will give them to justify all sorts of things that in fact many people who ticked "CofE" or whatever would not agree to if the question had been asked more neutrally.   

The question, as stated, is a bit ambiguous…

It’s worse than that. The evidence suggests that it will significantly distort the accuracy of the data it provides.

…and I can't criticise Vlad too harshly because I can sort of see his point of view.

I can. He’s arguing that less accurate data is better than more accurate data provided the former happens to justify his faith views.
That’s a bad argument I think.

I stopped believing in God when I was twenty, but I carried on regarding myself as being in the C of E for several years after that. If  C of E had been an option in the 1991 census, I might have ticked that option, instead of "no religion".

Yes, but the point here is this: on the basis of the data the census is biased toward producing, would "cultural religionists" (for want of a better term – ie people who like the buildings, the music etc but don't believe any of the faith's various tenets to be true) also be content to be part of the constituency then used to justify policies on faith schools, on gay adoption, on clerics by right in the legislature etc?   

Given the alleged origin of the question, maybe a better one would have been "Are you a Muslim?"

Only if you’d been asked first, “do you have religious beliefs?”

Imagine that, say, the gov’t wanted to build a football stadium in every town and to justify that policy had on the census the question “Which sport interests you the most? Football? Tennis? Cricket?" etc and when, say, 51% said “football” (because they had even less interest in the other sports, or their Dad was a Spurs fan, or football was the sport most played at their school etc) they used that 51% to justify building the stadia.

Now imagine instead that the Census asked. “Do you have any interest in sport? If “No”, ignore the next question”, and this time the next question (about which sports respondents are interested in) had only 25% tick “Football?”

That’s the point here. Questions biased towards false positives (no matter what the subject) will be used to justify policies that wouldn’t see the light of day without those false positives.

Vlad it seems favours that provided the false positives justify policies geared toward his religious beliefs, though my guess is that he’d be less keen on policies made on the same basis in any other area of public life.     

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Jeremy,

No doubt, but lots of people it seems do. This from the article Vlad linked to:

“A recent YouGov poll for Humanists UK asked respondents the same religion question as the census and then fired off additional inquiries to those who selected Christian. Fifty-nine per cent said they selected it because they were christened. Forty four per cent said it was because one of their parents was Christian. Clearly many thought of it as a cultural category.

When it came to the actual contents of the Christian faith – the “belief” part of religion – the results plummeted. Just 34 per cent said it was because they “believe in the teachings of Christianity”. Only 27 per cent said they “believe that Jesus Christ was a real person who died and came back to life, and was the son of God”. When it came to practice, the numbers fell even further. Most people who ticked Christian either never attended a place of worship or did so less than once a year.”

The point here is first that the way a question is framed heavily influences the answer it produces, and second that policy makers will rely on the false positives the census as it’s currently framed will give them to justify all sorts of things that in fact many people who ticked "CofE" or whatever would not agree to if the question had been asked more neutrally.   

It’s worse than that. The evidence suggests that it will significantly distort the accuracy of the data it provides.

I can. He’s arguing that less accurate data is better than more accurate data provided the former happens to justify his faith views.
That’s a bad argument I think.

Yes, but the point here is this: on the basis of the data the census is biased toward producing, would "cultural religionists" (for want of a better term – ie people who like the buildings, the music etc but don't believe any of the faith's various tenets to be true) also be content to be part of the constituency then used to justify policies on faith schools, on gay adoption, on clerics by right in the legislature etc?   

Only if you’d been asked first, “do you have religious beliefs?”

Imagine that, say, the gov’t wanted to build a football stadium in every town and to justify that policy had on the census the question “Which sport interests you the most? Football? Tennis? Cricket?" etc and when, say, 51% said “football” (because they had even less interest in the other sports, or their Dad was a Spurs fan, or football was the sport most played at their school etc) they used that 51% to justify building the stadia.

Now imagine instead that the Census asked. “Do you have any interest in sport? If “No”, ignore the next question”, and this time the next question (about which sports respondents are interested in) had only 25% tick “Football?”

That’s the point here. Questions biased towards false positives (no matter what the subject) will be used to justify policies that wouldn’t see the light of day without those false positives.

Vlad it seems favours that provided the false positives justify policies geared toward his religious beliefs, though my guess is that he’d be less keen on policies made on the same basis in any other area of public life.   

I am not supporting bad data over better data.

You are. You have been told numerous times your suggested criteria, Belief. Does not yield the data the ONS require to be relevant to policy makers

Who is more accurate the man who returns 11 eggs after told to collect 12. Or a man who returns with 12 oranges after having been asked to collect a dozen eggs.

I can't make it simpler for you than that.

[ProfessorDavey]

So you say, but I had no trouble reading the question and selecting "no religion" from the options displayed to me.

You might have done, and indeed so did I, but that is besides the point.

Various pieces of work have concluded that the census question artificially inflates the numbers of people who appear to be religious due to the way in which the question is asked. Typically by about 10%, so that's perhaps 5 million people who census religious but would indicate they aren't religious if the question was asked in a more balanced manner.

And the census is supposed to be a snapshot of the country now - not 10 years ago or when I was a child. So very notion that the wording of the question leads people to answer about their religion when they were a child demonstrates how poor the question is for a census.

[ProfessorDavey]

I am not supporting bad data over better data.

If you support the current question over a neutral question with a simple yes/no followed by subsidiary question for those that tick yes then you are, indeed, supporting bad data over better data.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I am not supporting bad data over better data.

Yes you are. The framing of the question produces false positives that can and likely will be used to justify public policies. You approve of that. That’s “supporting bad data over better data”. QED

You are. You have been told numerous times your suggested criteria, Belief. Does not yield the data the ONS require to be relevant to policy makers

And you’ve been told just as many times why this is wrong. If you want to introduce belief-based policies and rely on census answers to justify them, then should know what people’s beliefs are. The current census question won’t tell you that because it will also capture false positives from people who don’t have those beliefs at all.   

Who is more accurate the man who returns 11 eggs after told to collect 12. Or a man who returns with 12 oranges after having been asked to collect a dozen eggs.

Oh dear. You never have understood how analogies work have you. I'll correct it for you: if the question was “Which type of eggs would you choose: Fried? Scrambled? Poached?" etc and “fried” scored, say, 51% a policy-maker might then seek to make fried eggs for breakfast compulsory for everyone.

If though you asked first, “Do you like eggs (Y/N)? If “no”, ignore the next question about which types of eggs you'd choose” chances are “Fried” would only score, say, 21% of the overall respondents’ replies (because the egg dislikers wouldn't be answering that question). And when that happens, the justification for making fried eggs for breakfast compulsory as a matter of public policy evaporates.

Do you get it now?

I can't make it simpler for you than that.

Or wrong. I can only explain it to you so many times. If you keep refusing to engage with the explanation though, then you’ll keep making the same mistake. It’s your choice. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

 I'll correct it for you: if the question was “Which type of eggs would you choose: Fried? Scrambled? Poached?" etc and “fried” scored, say, 51% a policy-maker might then seek to make fried eggs for breakfast compulsory for everyone.

If though you asked first, “Do you like eggs (Y/N)? If “no”, ignore the next question about which types of eggs you'd choose” chances are “Fried” would only score, say, 21% of the overall respondents’ replies (because the egg dislikers wouldn't be answering that question). And when that happens, the justification for making fried eggs for breakfast compulsory as a matter of public policy evaporates.

Do you get it now?

.

I get that you are either trying to avoid that your desire to collect data about belief/faith to the exclusion of Practice and culture of religion is not concerned a justifiable pursuit by the ONS.

I get that what was proposed by Humanist UK was felt to be inadequate and certainly of less utility to the question which has appeared.(Although I understand you deny this in favour of a conspiracy theory)

How many more times does the inadequacy of your questioning need to be spelled out to you?

You might get lucky and have your question 1 but it is unlikely to be other than do you have a life stance, since life stances such as humanism are assuming many of the trappings of religion such as, as in humanism, society reflecting their views more.

Life stance is already on census questions in the scandinavian zone I understand.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I get that you are either trying to avoid that your desire to collect data about belief/faith to the exclusion of Practice and culture of religion is not concerned a justifiable pursuit by the ONS.

Wrong again. It is a “justifiable pursuit by the ONS” inasmuch as the ONS is told to lump together cultural religionists with believing religionists. They’re just doing their job. What’s wrong though is that policy makers will then take both types of (undifferentiated) response to justify belief-only related policies.     

I get that what was proposed by Humanist UK was felt to be inadequate and certainly of less utility to the question which has appeared.(Although I understand you deny this in favour of a conspiracy theory)

The only conspiracy theory here is yours, not mine remember? I’ve already explained to you why more accurate data is better than less accurate data, and why it doesn’t matter a jot who it is that argues for that. 

How many more times does the inadequacy of your questioning need to be spelled out to you?

Once would be helpful. Why don’t you try to demonstrate this supposed inadequacy?

You might get lucky and have your question 1 but it is unlikely to be other than do you have a life stance, since life stances such as humanism are assuming many of the trappings of religion such as, as in humanism, society reflecting their views more.

And for those of us working in English?

Slowly now – once again: if you want to justify belief-based policies in the public domain by relying on census results, then the census should identify what people believe.

Try writing that down over and over again until it sinks in.

Oh, that applies the other way round too by the way. Let’s say that someone was interested in developing a public policy to do with visiting church buildings. The question currently on the census would give false positives for that too – it’d capture the cultural religionists (who want to visit the buildings) but it would also capture the believing religionists who, for all the policy-maker would know, may never want to set foot in a church. 

Life stance is already on census questions in the scandinavian zone I understand.

“Life stance” (whatever that means) has eff all to do with it. You cannot justify belief-based policies with census data that’s corrupted by also capturing the non-believers who tick the same box.

Clear enough now?   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Wrong again. It is a “justifiable pursuit by the ONS” inasmuch as the ONS is told to lump together cultural religionists with believing religionists. They’re just doing their job. What’s wrong though is that policy makers will then take both types of (undifferentiated) response to justify belief-only related policies.     

The only conspiracy theory here is yours, not mine remember? I’ve already explained to you why more accurate data is better than less accurate data, and why it doesn’t matter a jot who it is that argues for that. 

Once would be helpful. Why don’t you try to demonstrate this supposed inadequacy?

And for those of us working in English?

Slowly now – once again: if you want to justify belief-based policies in the public domain by relying on census results, then the census should identify what people believe.

This completely ignores that it is Humanist UK who want belief only questions on the census.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and you suggested one yourself!!!!!!!!!!!! and here you are complaining about belief based policies.

The model used by the ONS is that religion impacts society most through culture and practice and then belief brings up the rear.

Belief based policies indeed.

Mercifully the ONS decided not to let Humanist UK's beliefs based request dictate the religion question on the census.

Getting a Life stance question on the census is I acknowledge as much Fantasy Census as what you are indulging in.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

This completely ignores that it is Humanist UK who want belief only questions on the census.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and you suggested one yourself!!!!!!!!!!!! and here you are complaining about belief based policies.

This completely ignores that who it is that argues that more accurate data is to be preferred over less accurate data for justifying public policy purposes has absolutely fuck all to do with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and stop misrepresenting me too. I’m not “complaining about belief based policies” here at all. What I’m complaining about is justifying them with false or misleading data.

Why aren’t you?

The model used by the ONS is that religion impacts society most through culture and practice and then belief brings up the rear.

No it isn’t. The “model” used by the ONS is a crude approximation of religiosity whose crudeness can then be exploited to justify public policy measures even though more accurate answers wouldn't actually justify those policies at all.   

Belief based policies indeed.

Yes: faith schools, adoption laws, tax exemptions and charitable status, clerics by right in the HoL – you name it.

Mercifully the ONS decided not to let Humanist UK's beliefs based request dictate the religion question on the census.

It’s only “merciful” if you think public policies should be justified by corrupted data. Clearly you do think that, presumably because in this case those policies happen to suit your agenda.

Getting Life stance is I acknowledge as much Fantasy Census as what you are indulging in.

Incoherent. Yet again: you cannot justify belief-based policies with census data that’s corrupted by also capturing the non-believers who tick the same box.

Why is this still confusing you?

[jeremyp]

Jeremy,

No doubt, but lots of people it seems do.

That's a bit of an assumption. Maybe people regard the questions as different so they give different answers.

Fifty-nine per cent said they selected it because they were christened. Forty four per cent said it was because one of their parents was Christian. Clearly many thought of it as a cultural category.

So a lot of people regard Christianity as their religion because they have some sort of link to it. If the intent of the question is to find out people's cultural religion, it works OK. If people regard themselves as Christian, even if they don't believe in God or even that Jesus was a real person (that 27 percent figure seems suspiciously low to me), that's fine as far as I'm concerned.

The point here is first that the way a question is framed heavily influences the answer it produces

The problem that I have is that here is a question in which the answer "no religion" features prominently and yet some people whine when the result isn't what they think it should be. I do not think the question is misleading and if non believers are selecting "Christian", it's because that is how they wish to be perceived.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Jeremy

That's a bit of an assumption. Maybe people regard the questions as different so they give different answers.

No it isn’t. Framing bias is a well-known and well-understood phenomenon. I gave Vlad an example (that he just ignored of course) of highly qualified and intelligent oncologists being asked the same question framed differently (90% survival rate vs 10% mortality rate) and producing significantly different answers because of the language used.

So a lot of people regard Christianity as their religion because they have some sort of link to it. If the intent of the question is to find out people's cultural religion, it works OK. If people regard themselves as Christian, even if they don't believe in God or even that Jesus was a real person (that 27 percent figure seems suspiciously low to me), that's fine as far as I'm concerned.

Even when policy makers then co-opt those same cultural Christians to justify public policies that are actually belief-dependent - like adoption by gay couples for example?

Really? 

The problem that I have is that here is a question in which the answer "no religion" features prominently and yet some people whine when the result isn't what they think it should be. I do not think the question is misleading and if non believers are selecting "Christian", it's because that is how they wish to be perceived.

Then you probably shouldn’t have. When the question is trialled both ways (with a “none” option after CofE etc, and with a prior question about whether they have religious belief at all) you get different answers. The former consistently scores higher for religiosity than the latter, and often significantly so.