Secularism: Mod note in first post

smacl

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Might be something to do with the cost of the ticket to attend sports matches in person.

You wonder if they put Mass on the telly at the same time as the Sunday game, which would have higher viewing figures? Or as real test of faith to the flock, how about if it clashed with Game of Thrones? :pac:

Nick Park

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Might be something to do with the cost of the ticket to attend sports matches in person.

Or it might not, since sporting events include your local GAA club, amateur soccer team etc. which are often free to attend matches.

Nick Park

smacl wrote: »

You wonder if they put Mass on the telly at the same time as the Sunday game, which would have higher viewing figures? Or as real test of faith to the flock, how about if it clashed with Game of Thrones? :pac:

Oh, I'd rather watch paint dry than watch a televised mass.

My point is, that if religion is something that a significant portion of the population participates in, then it is entirely consistent for a public broadcaster in a secular society to devote proportionate time and funds to producing creative and interesting religious broadcasting.

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

Oh, I'd rather watch paint dry than watch a televised mass.

My point is, that if religion is something that a significant portion of the population participates in, then it is entirely consistent for a public broadcaster in a secular society to devote proportionate time and funds to producing creative and interesting religious broadcasting.

No issue with that in principal, though our national broadcaster often seems challenged enough in making creative and interesting programs without religion. Unlike say primary school places, it is not as if the viewer doesn't have plenty of alternative options if a religious program doesn't float their boat. All that said, Gaybo and Stephen Fry seems to have elicited plenty of interest even among us heathens.

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

Whatever way you slice and dice it, even the lowest estimates of church attendance still show more people attending church weekly than attend sports events annually.

Depends what you call a match. Up in my neck of the woods there are games being played on multiple sports fields every Sunday and regularly on week nights. I'd say many if not most peoples kids play some sports at the weekend as do many parents. Mostly amateur, for fun and fitness, and very much a community activity. Not unlike Mass used to be in some respects, though arguably more healthy and much more fun.

Most people who attend matches are participants, and I'd guess they not only outnumber regular mass goers, but show quite a bit more devotion. Some of course do both.

.........

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm not sure that terms like "true secularism" are going to be helpful; even if not so intended, they look like an attempt to claim an authenticity or value for one sense of the word, and to deny it to others. It's like arguing about who's a true atheist, or who's a true Catholic; it will generate more heat than light.

I think that's a bit of deflection. As secularism isn't taking sides between belief and non belief, or excluding belief and non belief, it's quite easy to determine if something is actually secularism or state atheism disguised as secularism. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea might like to claim that there is no such thing as 'true' democracy and therefore they can claim any definition of democracy they like, but I think we all know actual democracy and secularism when we see it in action and how citizens with or without belief are treated, and it's not how you defined it, what you defined is much closer to state atheism.

Hotblack Desiato

Nick Park wrote: »

No, the European Social Survey of 2010 - which, according to my link, indicated that 41% attend church weekly.

There must be as many liars in that survey as there are bogus Irish speakers in the census.
Easy to give the 'safe' answer or the one you think the surveyor wants to hear especially in a face-to-face survey.

Peregrinus

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

There must be as many liars in that survey as there are bogus Irish speakers in the census.
Easy to give the 'safe' answer or the one you think the surveyor wants to hear especially in a face-to-face survey.

Why "must" there be that many liars? Is it that your preconceptions require it?

I've already pointed out that, yes, surveys which measure church attendance by asking people whether they attend, and surveys that measure church attendance by counting people who attend, do produce different results.

But there's no logical necessity that this difference must be such that the numbers actually attending church are fewer than the numbers actually attending football games. This is simply an article of faith on your part, unsupported so far by any evidence at all.

The same phenomenon is observed in other areas, incidentally. Surveys show that, in the period after an election, a higher proportion of the electorates reports that they voted for the winning party than actually voted for the winning party according to the election results.

And this lead so the conclusion that, if we're going to correct the reported church attendance figures for over-reporting, for consistency we must also correct the reported football game attendance figures for over-reporting. We have no reason to assume that the same "I like to give the answer that reflects well on me" factor won't be at work there, too.

Peregrinus

robindch wrote: »

Would be interesting to break down these figures . . .

Knock yourself out. You can download the raw data.

robindch wrote: »

Going out on a limb here, but I'm going to suggest that there'd likely be a strong inverse relationship between youth and interest level.

There's a positive correlation between age and attendance rates, if that's what you mean.

It remains to be seen whether this means that attendance rates will continue to drop as existing low-attending cohorts mature and older high-attending cohorts suffer, ahem, demographic shrinkage, or whether people who are less prone to go to church in their younger years become more prone to do so as they mature. Or a bit of both.

My guess, FWIW, is a bit of both, but more of the former than the latter.

Nick Park

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

There must be as many liars in that survey as there are bogus Irish speakers in the census.
Easy to give the 'safe' answer or the one you think the surveyor wants to hear especially in a face-to-face survey.

There would appear to be little point in asking for a citation if you automatically reject as 'lies' any survey that doesn't fit with your own notions.

I mentioned worship attendance/participation in relation to sports attendance/participation as an illustrative aside in a point about broadcasting and a secular society. You asked for a citation.

When I provided a citation you moaned about how one of the surveys in it came from a Catholic source and ignored the one that was from a secular source.

When I pointed out that my citation included a survey which was from a secular source you dismissed it, without providing any counter evidence, as lies.

All the research done in this area indicates that more people in Ireland attend religious worship than play in or attend sporting events of any description - let alone my more modest point about GAA, rugby and soccer. The research indicates that the numbers attending religious worship are massively greater - weekly participation/attendance at religious worship (in percentage terms) exceeding annual participation/attendance at sports events.

If you want to continue down this rabbit trail then I would ask you to provide a citation to support the extraordinary claim, contrary to all published research, that participation/attendance at football matches in Ireland (of any code) exceeds participation/attendance at religious worship.

Nick Park

robindch wrote: »

Going out on a limb here, but I'm going to suggest that there'd likely be a strong inverse relationship between youth and interest level.

So, what you're saying is that those with more life experience are much more likely to be interested in religion than those with little life experience?

Fair enough, although it seems to be a strange point for an atheist to make.

hinault

Peregrinus wrote: »

Why "must" there be that many liars? Is it that your preconceptions require it?.

Definitely.

Hotblack Desiato

Nick Park wrote: »

There would appear to be little point in asking for a citation if you automatically reject as 'lies' any survey that doesn't fit with your own notions.

Twisting my words.
I never said the survey is lies. It inevitably contains a proportion of liars, however.

It's well known in any survey asking an 'emotional' question or one where there is a perceived judgment on the participant if they give a particular answer. People will lie to avoid giving the awkward or unpopular answer.

This is a systematic bias present even in paper surveys (Irish speakers and catholics in the census) but most pronounced in face to face surveys. Particularly when there's no way to tell if you're lying or not. Some fecker stops you in the street and starts asking you questions you find embarrassing or uncomfortable, yet you feel it's too late now to decline, so you give them the answer they want to hear that doesn't raise any awkward follow up questions.

For the abortion debate, in particular, this needs to be borne in mind. (And yes there were 'shy Nos' in the marriage equality surveys, and this was seen to some extent in the actual vote)

It's difficult to see how a face-to-face survey can overcome this huge inherent bias.

An actual count of attendance rather than surveys would be worthwhile. No doubt the RCC has good figures of its own but isn't going to release them.

Towers Wilson report preparaed for the RC is mentioned here http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/mass-attendance-in-dublin-to-drop-by-one-third-by-2030-1.2504351

Weekly Mass attendance levels in Dublin are currently put at 20-22 per cent (of the population), while being as low as 2-3 per cent in some working-class parishes

Now even accepting the 20-22% figure as accurate and not an overestimate, it's completely not credible to arrive from there to an overall population figure of 40% for weekly church attendance. I'll run the figures later but I'd be surprised if it's even mathematically possible.

If you want to continue down this rabbit trail then I would ask you to provide a citation to support the extraordinary claim, contrary to all published research, that participation/attendance at football matches in Ireland (of any code) exceeds participation/attendance at religious worship.

Twisting words again. I made no such claim, which is a rather silly claim in any case as some people do both and many do neither. All I did was question the 40% figure.

Nick Park

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Twisting my words.
I never said the survey is lies. It inevitably contains a proportion of liars, however.

The semantics just kicked into overdrive. The liars were either statistically significant or not. If they were not statistically significant, then not worth mentioning. If they were statistically significant, then their responses are, by most people's definitions, 'lies'.

It's well known in any survey asking an 'emotional' question or one where there is a perceived judgment on the participant if they give a particular answer. People will lie to avoid giving the awkward or unpopular answer.

Such as asking people whether they participate in sporting activity? Or whether they actually attend live sporting events rather than being the kind of couch potatoes who just watch sport on the TV?

Now even accepting the 20-22% figure as accurate and not an overestimate, it's completely not credible to arrive from there to an overall population figure of 40% for weekly church attendance. I'll run the figures later but I'd be surprised if it's even mathematically possible.

Let's unpack what you just posted. You have just cited a source that states the percentage of weekly mass attendance in Dublin (which, by common consensus, is the least religious area in the country by a considerable margin) is greater than the percentage of the population that attends a sporting event (all sports, not just football) once per year.

Twisting words again. I made no such claim, which is a rather silly claim in any case as some people do both and many do neither.

The issue of whether people do both or neither is statistically irrelevant to the stated fact that more people participate/attend religious worship than participate/attend GAA, rugby or soccer.

All I did was question the 40% figure.

No, what you did was request a citation for my claim that more people participate/attend religious worship than participate/attend in GAA, rugby or soccer.

However, you have now yourself provided a citation stating that the weekly participation/attendance at religious worship in the most irreligious part of the country is, in percentage terms, still higher than the national percentage of those who participate/attend any sport (not merely GAA, rugby or soccer as I claimed) once per year.

So, unless you want to keep quibbling that the difference between the two figures is slightly less massive than in the citation I provided, presumably the point is conceded and we can go back to discussing secularism?

robindch

Nick Park wrote: »

So, what you're saying is that those with more life experience are much more likely to be interested in religion than those with little life experience?

Fair enough, although it seems to be a strange point for an atheist to make.

Rookie mistake there Nick - correlation does not imply causation.

One could also point out that religion is more important to people with gray hair, or to people who are closer to death.

In terms of a belief system which claims to prevent people from death, which explanation is more likely to be the right one?

Hotblack Desiato

Someone did a very good post a while back looking at the non-religious figures by age cohort over the last few censuses. Their conclusion - those who ticked non-religious in the past continue to do so as they age (and even in the oldest age cohorts, there are people who never ticked NR before who are doing so now.) Meanwhile the proportion of younger adults ticking NR is going through the roof. There is no reason to believe a substantial proportion of them are going to become religious in future if 14 years of daily RC indoctrination didn't work.

Hotblack Desiato

Nick Park wrote: »

So, unless you want to keep quibbling that the difference between the two figures is slightly less massive than in the citation I provided, presumably the point is conceded and we can go back to discussing secularism?

I was questioning the 40% or 41% weekly church attendance claim, not anything to do with sport.

Let's plug in some figures. They're far from complete and not necessarily reliable but they're the best we have as far as I'm aware.

From Census 2016: RC 78% Non-religious 10% Others 12%. Also the population of the greater Dublin area is 40% of the total population

Towers Wilson report states/claims that the Dublin weekly attendance at RC mass is 22%. I am assuming that this is 22% of self-declared catholics not 22% of the whole population.

I am also assuming the non-RC-religion attendance rate is 50% (possibly being quite generous here - Church of Ireland, the largest sub-group, states15%) - and for non-religious it is zero

To reach the claimed overall weekly church attendance of 41%, the proportion of RCs outside the greater Dublin area attending each week needs to be no less than 60%.

I think the RC church would be very happy indeed if that were the case (apart from finding it difficult or impossible to manage with the current numbers of priests.) Perhaps it is 60% or more in some rural areas, but in cities and large towns outside Dublin, I don't think so - do you?


|Proportion of Total Population|Attendance Rate|Proportion of Total Population Attending

RC-Greater Dublin Area|0.31|0.22|0.07
RC-Rest of Irl|0.47|0.60|0.28
No Religion- Whole of Irl|0.10|0.00|0.00
Other Religion - Whole of Irl|0.12|0.50|0.06

|1.00||0.41

Nick Park

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

I was questioning the 40% or 41% weekly church attendance claim, not anything to do with sport.

Let's plug in some figures. They're far from complete and not necessarily reliable but they're the best we have as far as I'm aware.

From Census 2016: RC 78% Non-religious 10% Others 12%. Also the population of the greater Dublin area is 40% of the total population

Towers Wilson report states/claims that the Dublin weekly attendance at RC mass is 22%. I am assuming that this is 22% of self-declared catholics not 22% of the whole population.

I am also assuming the non-RC-religion attendance rate is 50% (possibly being quite generous here - Church of Ireland, the largest sub-group, states15%) - and for non-religious it is zero

To reach the claimed overall weekly church attendance of 41%, the proportion of RCs outside the greater Dublin area attending each week needs to be no less than 60%.

I think the RC church would be very happy indeed if that were the case (apart from finding it difficult or impossible to manage with the current numbers of priests.) Perhaps it is 60% or more in some rural areas, but in cities and large towns outside Dublin, I don't think so - do you?


|Proportion of Total Population|Attendance Rate|Proportion of Total Population Attending

RC-Greater Dublin Area|0.31|0.22|0.07
RC-Rest of Irl|0.47|0.60|0.28
No Religion- Whole of Irl|0.10|0.00|0.00
Other Religion - Whole of Irl|0.12|0.50|0.06

|1.00||0.41

So my point is proved.

You want to quibble that the margin by which attendance at worship exceeds that at sporting events is slightly less massive than the citation I quoted.

Knock yourself out. I'd prefer to discuss secularism.

Peregrinus

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Someone did a very good post a while back looking at the non-religious figures by age cohort over the last few censuses. Their conclusion - those who ticked non-religious in the past continue to do so as they age (and even in the oldest age cohorts, there are people who never ticked NR before who are doing so now.) Meanwhile the proportion of younger adults ticking NR is going through the roof. There is no reason to believe a substantial proportion of them are going to become religious in future if 14 years of daily RC indoctrination didn't work.

Your point is sound, but I think we're conflating two issues here. Declining church attendances are not simply, or even mainly, the result of rising identification as non-religious/atheist/whatever. The bulk of the decline is not accounted for by the absence from church of people who identify as unbelievers , but by the absence of people who identify as believers, but don't go to church.

So, in terms of predicting the future, the question is not whether people who identify as unbelievers will suddenly get religion and start rocking up to church. The question is whether people who identify as believers but don't attend will attend more as they get older.

There's some evidence from other western societies which have secularised before Ireland did that, yes, this does happen; the older a believer is, the more likely he or she is to attend church, and this remains true in the long term, which means that as the individual believer ages, he or she is more likely to attend. But this is not a very strong pattern.

So, on the one hand the church will lose attenders as the relatively high-attending older cohorts die off. On the other, they'll gain attenders as the cohort of non-attending believers matures, and more of them start to attend.
(For simplicity we can ignore other factors, like unbelievers converting to belief, and starting to attend; they are likely to be too small to make any difference to the overall picture.)

My fairly confident bet is that the loss of attenders through death will, for the next few decades at any rate, substantially exceed the gain of attenders through higher rates of attendance from the maturing cohorts, so the overall decline will continue albeit that the rate of decline will reduce, and eventually tail off. We can't say where church attendance will bottom out, except that it will be at a level lower than at present. But since we don't have a terribly precise idea of what the present level of attendance is, that doesn't cast much light.

Peregrinus

robindch wrote: »

Rookie mistake there Nick - correlation does not imply causation.

One could also point out that religion is more important to people with gray hair, or to people who are closer to death.

In terms of a belief system which claims to prevent people from death, which explanation is more likely to be the right one?

They are not inconsistent.

If you assume that people's minds are concentrated by the (relative) closeness of death, they might be going to church because they think of this as some kind of investment in the afterlife. On the other hand, they might equally be going to church because the relative closeness of death has brought home to them the importance of living life well, and they find that going to church is part of a well-lived life.

Hotblack Desiato

Nick Park wrote: »

So my point is proved.

You want to quibble that the margin by which attendance at worship exceeds that at sporting events is slightly less massive than the citation I quoted.

Knock yourself out. I'd prefer to discuss secularism.

Don't you think the massive and ongoing fall in church attendance in this country is relevant to secularism? More relevant than football and GAA anyway.

Hotblack Desiato

Peregrinus wrote: »

My fairly confident bet is that the loss of attenders through death will, for the next few decades at any rate, substantially exceed the gain of attenders through higher rates of attendance from the maturing cohorts

What evidence is there of that?

In recent censuses we are seeing people in the older age cohorts move from RC to non-religious, which we did not see before.

Peregrinus

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Don't you think the massive and ongoing fall in church attendance in this country is relevant to secularism? More relevant than football and GAA anyway.

The context in which church attendance was originally brought up, way back in post #15, was not in relation to the number of people who have stopped going to church, but in relation to the number of people who still do.

Should a state broadcaster broadcast religious services?

On one understanding of secularism, no; public assets/money shouldn't be used to support religion in any way.

On another understanding of secularism, yes; secularism requires the state to disregard entirely the religious character of the services and decide whether to broadcast them by applying entirely secular criteria, ideally the same criteria used to determine whether to broadcast non-religious events, e.g. football games, or analogous criteria.

If a suitable secular criterion is public interest or public appetite, then the attendance figures for religious services and football games might be evidence supporting a view that, yes, if we broadcast football games we should also broadcast church services.

Ironically, in this context it doesn't matter very much which one is the larger figure, as long as they're both significant relative to the population at large.

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

So my point is proved.

No so sure, from what I can see your figures for sports participation are something of a partial truth picked to support your argument. If you look at the study the figures appear to based on while only 28% of adults play sports once a week 62% of primary school kids do. They also note that for adults, if recreational walking were considered a sport, it would be the most popular at 68%. Much like religion however, we don't see much recreational walking on TV, for the same reason that it would be dull as dishwater. Principal reason for things getting put on TV, such as soccer, GAA and Rugby, is they have an audience. I would imagine any secular concerns are well down the list at best, more likely not even considered. I would suggest your line of argument is entirely moot for this reason.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

They are not inconsistent.

If you assume that people's minds are concentrated by the (relative) closeness of death, they might be going to church because they think of this as some kind of investment in the afterlife. On the other hand, they might equally be going to church because the relative closeness of death has brought home to them the importance of living life well, and they find that going to church is part of a well-lived life.

Anecdotal, but from my limited observation many older people go to church as an opportunity to socialise as much as anything else, and while I'm no big fan of the RCC, I think that the church provides definite value in that context. I'm not entirely convinced that the more profound questions of an afterlife or not play any bigger part than the more mundane things such as having a natter with friends and neighbours in a familiar environment. Particularly in lower population density rural areas, for some elderly people this could be one of a relatively few regular opportunities to get out of the house and meet with their peers.

hinault

smacl wrote: »

Anecdotal, but from my limited observation many older people go to church as an opportunity to socialise as much as anything else, and while I'm no big fan of the RCC, I think that the church provides definite value in that context. I'm not entirely convinced that the more profound questions of an afterlife or not play any bigger part than the more mundane things such as having a natter with friends and neighbours in a familiar environment. Particularly in lower population density rural areas, for some elderly people this could be one of a relatively few regular opportunities to get out of the house and meet with their peers.

Attendance at Mass has always been a communal concept. The communal concept has it's basis in unity

You trying to second guess why person/people attend Mass is proving futile.

Nick Park

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Don't you think the massive and ongoing fall in church attendance in this country is relevant to secularism? More relevant than football and GAA anyway.

Oh, I do. As a Christian, and as a secularist, I think it's a very good trend indeed.

My point was simply, as a secularist, that it still makes sense for a national broadcaster in a secular society with proper separation of church and state to provide religious broadcasting as long as that reflects the interests of a significant sector of the population.

smacl

Nick Park wrote: »

My point was simply, as a secularist, that it still makes sense for a national broadcaster in a secular society with proper separation of church and state to provide religious broadcasting as long as that reflects the interests of a significant sector of the population.

I tend to agree in principal, though feel we're being ripped of by RTE in a more general sense paying a license fee for content that often few watch, and other paid for content that viewers have already paid for themselves to the likes of Sky. It also irks that their local competitor TV3 gets no subsidy while both are still carrying advertisements.

Peregrinus

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

What evidence is there of that?

Well, I did say earlier on in this thread that this is my guess. And we are prognisticating about what will happen in the future, so "evidence" as to future events is always going to be a bit indirect.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

In recent censuses we are seeing people in the older age cohorts move from RC to non-religious, which we did not see before.

Yes, but my guess would be that those are mostly people who are already not attending, and if so you wouldn't expect that to have a huge impact on church attendance rates.

And experience elsewhere suggests that, among self-identified believers, church attendance rises with age. Ireland could buck the international trend in this regard, but I see no reason to think so.

So, as already stated, among the current cohort identifying as believers, church attendance rates will rise as that cohort ages. But that will be more than offset by the shrinking of that cohort due to deaths at one end not being made up by numbers of younger people identifying as Christian.

Or, the tl;dr version - a higher proportion of believers will attend church, but that will be more than offset by the smaller numbers of believers, so that church attendance, whether in absolute numbers or as a percentage of the total population, will fall.

Absolam

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

I disagree. That would be the state adopting a neutral stance. Providing funding to religious schools is condoning religion - a pro-theist stance. Providing non religious schools is adopting a neutral or atheist stance. An anti-theist stance would be to punish self-funding religious schools.

Well, there's nothing at all neutral about deliberately depriving someone of something just because they're religious; that's bias. I'm dubious about your condoning logic, not least because the term itself denotes acceptance of behaviour that is considered wrong, and if the State is neutral on the subject of religion, it can't then say religion is wrong. Providing for non religious schools, in the same way as for religious schools, definitely a neutral stance. Punishing self-funding religious schools would, I think, take anti-theism into the realms of persecution rather than mere anti-theism.

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

All citizens should pay their taxes. The state should then fund secular schools. If the religious people want their children to learn about religion then let them set up their own self-funded religion schools. Problem?

Or; all citizens should pay their taxes, the State should be responsible for funding schools, and religious people should have the same right as everyone else to decide what education they want for their children. Problem solved; we have that already.