As Australia gets ready to launch their national census on August 9, there’s a movement of people trying to get their fellow citizens to list “Jedi” as their official religion.
Fun stuff, but according to io9, it’s causing a major problem for the government – and atheist groups. In 2011, 64,390 Australians registered as “Jedi,” which was an increase from the 58,053 that did it on the 2006 census.
Numbers like that put “Jedi” right behind Sikh on the list of religions in the country. It seems unlikely that all these people truly believe themselves to be actual Jedi, and most of them make the claim as a harmless way to declare their Star Wars fandom and give the government the middle finger at the same time.
But the Atheist Foundation of Australia doesn’t think the joke is very funny. When officially counted, “Jedi” gets relegated into the “Not Defined” category rather than the “No Religion” one, making Australia “look more religious than it really is.”
According to the AFA, “data on religious affiliation is used for public policy, city planning, community support facilities and more,” which could cause for some serious headaches when it come to secular-minded folks.
After misguidedly listing Jedi as my religion for most of my adult life… pic.twitter.com/awq4wvwUR2
— Adam Valentine (@Adam86Valentine) July 27, 2016
From Mashable:
Do we really want anthropologists of the future to delve into the mythical and colourful history of Australia and conclude that we were a nation of next level kooks?
Good point.
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