One of the most cherished myths to which fundamentalist atheists cling is the misguided and downright stupid idea that the Catholic Church and Catholics are somehow anti-science.

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In the previous census in 2011, "Catholic" was the top option, with "no religion" at the bottom of the list, below a large "other please specify" box.

The change came after rationalist and sceptic groups lobbied the Australian Bureau of Statistics, following the 2011 census.

The groups argued the change would improve accuracy.

In the 2011 census, 5.4 million people picked the "Catholic" box and a total of 13.1 million Australians (61.1 per cent) indicated their religion was some type of Christianity.

Meanwhile, 4.7 million (22.2 per cent) of Australians picked "no religion", or wrote down agnosticism, atheism, humanism or rationalism.

The next Australian census is in 2016, with results being known the following year.

A change in the percentage of people affiliating as Christians could impact Australian government spending programmes, such as school chaplaincy services.

When a similar change was introduced into the New Zealand census, the country's Christians lost their position as the majority and the number of people recording no religion jumped from 35 per cent to 42 per cent, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Placing the 'no religion' box at the top of the list could swing the results significantly, according to Associate Professor Roger Wilkins at the University of Melbourne, who produces the annual Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey.

"People are looking for the first option that they think they can fit into . . . those sorts of people who are not strongly committed one way or the other are particularly prone to being influenced by the order of responses," he told Fairfax Media.

Managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, said the order of answers on the census form was irrelevant, but he did expect to see a continuing decline in the number of Christians.

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: ID blog

Rationalist David Hines has questioned state schools about their religious instruction programmes under the Official Information Act, and plans to create a public database of the findings.

A member of the Secular Education Network, Hines is against religion being taught in publicly funded schools.

The initial results from his survey show that 56 schools have stopped religious education since 2011. Of the 1429 schools that responded, 38 per cent have held some kind of religious instruction during school hours this year.

Another 58 per cent either had no religious instruction, or held it at lunchtime or after school. The remaining 4 per cent had not yet decided.

Some schools said increasing numbers of children were being pulled from classes, while others couldn't fit the Bible in Schools programme into their stretched curriculums.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• gbs2.wikispaces.com

Torbay School, on Auckland's North Shore, will cancel the optional Churches Education Commission Bible in Schools programme, after 40% of parents surveyed voted to discontinue the programme in the school.

In other schools a no vote of 15% has been sufficient to have the optional programme cancelled.

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The country's largest provider of religious instruction, the Churches Education Commission, told its followers in a recent newsletter that schools were an "under-utilised mission field".

"Churches by and large have not woken up to the fact that this is a mission field on our doorstep. The children are right there and we don't have to supply buildings, seating, lighting or heating," commission director David Mulholland wrote.

Christian followers were also encouraged to join school boards so they could have "more influence" on holding religious study in class.

Public schools are secular but can choose to "close" in the middle of the day for religious lessons.

Rationalist David Hines said the loophole allowing Christian education undermined the secular education system.

"The teachers are all evangelical Christians ... the values do not include respect for other religions or for secular value systems."

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Hundreds of primary schools "close" during class time so religious teachers can come in and teach Bible-based values, and parents must opt out if they do not want their children to attend.

A group of rationalists has launched a campaign to keep religion out of schools, saying it should be taught only as part of social studies or extra-curricular activities, and that prayer and Bible studies should ultimately be banned entirely.

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