Atheist Ireland Forum

I was reading the census supplement "This is Ireland" today, it was printed on the 30th of March. It claims the number of atheists in Ireland is 4,000. They are clearly using the number of people who wrote atheist as "Other Religion".

They do mention this is in addition to the number of "No Religion".

Does this confusion stem from the flawed census question or poor reporting? Can this be corrected or have they interpreted the results as best as reasonably possible?

I'd say both, but my own 30 second analysis puts 95% of the flaw on the CSO, due to the incorrect census question also the CSO releasing data that puts Atheism as 'other religion' independent of no-religion ??. Clearly a fundamental error that goes against basic mathematical grouping that we learnt in primary school.

Maybe the CSO should employ a few mathematicians, or consult a 10 year old.

George Boole would be turning in his grave in Blackrock cemetery -Cork, less that 2miles from the CSO

Is there a breakdown of the 'other religion' category? Exactly what religions and populations.

Not yet. The most detailed breakdown available is here http://cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/doc ... Tables.pdf but it still leaves 14,118 people unaccounted for. The full details will be released in October.
We can surmise that as the smallest stated religion (Brethren) has 336 adherents, each of the religions lumped together had fewer. Other Christian religions were counted separately, so therefore, if the CSO has followed best practices, there are at least 42 other non-Christian religions represented in the state and likely three or four times that number (assuming the numbers tail off in a statistically reasonable manner). Personally, I'm skeptical and I think they're fudging the numbers in some way.
One thing I've just spotted: Two religions experienced unusually large changes. The population of Orthodox more than doubled, while the population of Methodists almost halved. Now I can just about imagine that 24,000 Orthodox Christians moved here in the last five years but why did 5,300 Methodists leave? The answer seems to be that in the 2006 census Methodist was listed as an option, and it was removed in 2011, while Orthodox was not there in 2006 but was added in 2011. It seems all but certain that the layout of the question had more influence on these numbers than any demographic change. I suspect that when their religions were not listed, many adherents simply wrote "Christian". This is significant because one of our arguments is that the way the question is presented influences the results and this seems to prove as much.

Thanks, quite an interesting read.

I didn't know that 'Protestant' or 'Lapsed Roman Catholic' were religions. I thought the term 'Protestant' referred to all Christian religions, excluding the eastern orthodox, that weren't under the thumb of the RCC. And I thought the 80% of the Irish RC population would of marked 'Lapsed Roman Catholic'

Also quite a large number of 'not stated'.

Can someone refer me to a website that goes intelligently and simply through the whole 'atheism is a religion' debate. I'm mightily confused.

This is a much better source than the PDF file if anyone's interested. You can query the database yourself...

http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/Statire ... Language=0