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Essay On No Religion

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More Australians recorded “No religion” than any other belief category, in the 2016 Census. The results, released on 27 June 2017, show non-belief surging from 22.3% in 2011 to 3x.x%, overtaking Catholicism which fell from 25.3% to x.xx%. Gaining a boost from the elevation of “No religion” to the top of the form, the scale of the change nevertheless represents a watershed moment: no longer can it be claimed that we are a Christian country. Marking a seismic shift in our belief landscape, (more than) one third of Australians are now nonbelievers, and less than half are Christian. The effects will be wide ranging and longstanding, because nonbelievers represent a new voting block with a larger demographic than most people realised. …show more content…

Which explains how we allow Christian chaplains in schools, faith-based religious instruction, and prayers in parliament. The lip service paid to secularism stands in contrast to our decreasing piety. Symptomatic of this decline, parents are increasingly opting their children out of faith-taught religious instruction classes in NSW and QLD state schools. And in Victoria, these classes were scrapped from curriculum time, in 2015, to allow more focus on core learning. A new understanding of secularism resists the privileging of specific belief systems, religious or nonreligious, in the public domain. As the handmaiden of democracy, secularism insists that the democratic principal is not diluted by prioritising the beliefs on one group of voters over another. A notable disparity exists when taxpayer-funded and tax-free faith groups enjoy blanket exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. So, the taxes of some nonbelievers subsidise groups who actively and legally discriminate against them. Rising non-belief shines a light on certain areas of public policy where powerful religious lobbies continue to stonewall progress. Why, for instance, is same sex marriage still not legal? Why is there such a deference to minority views, favouring religious convictions over nonreligious convictions, that the parliament fails to enact popular opinion? Similarly, consider euthanasia: 75% of Australians support assisted dying and of those who object, 90% are religious.

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