Antidisestablishmentarianism is not favoured!

Following on from yesterday's interesting revelations from the Ipsos Mori poll carried out on behalf of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, let's examine the results of part 2, which can be found in full here.

There is a thread of discussion about the topic here.  Note that this report includes the questions from part 1 which I discussed yesterday in 50% of UK christians 'not religious'.

Part 2 is much more about social attitudes of those claiming to have ticked the 'Christian' box on the 2011 census.  I will pick out a few points which seemed interesting.

Only 54% supported state funding of 'faith schools' for their own denomination, with a very slightly lower figure in favour of extending that privilege to other denominations of christianity.  The figure dropped to 44% for other religions.  To an atheist it seems surprising that 'religious' people always prefer to favour other (opposing) religious people over those who are non-religious.  It is a consistent finding but nonetheless difficult to comprehend.  I think it can only demonstrate that they haven't understood the threat properly.

There was surprisingly little support for reserving seats in the House of Lords for bishops of the Church of England.  Only 26% were in favour, with 32% against.  Similarly, support for retaining the current situation of the Church of England as the 'established church' was rather weak.  46% seemed to favour disestablishment, with 32% preferring to go for antidisestablishmentarianism.  (Not often that you have an excuse to use one of the longest words in the English language!)

Nearly half (46%) did not consider homosexuality to be 'wrong', with 28% believing that it was.  (The others were apathetic about it - which seems typical of the sample.)  Three times more agreed that homosexual couples should have the same legal rights as heterosexuals than disagreed.

Three times more agreed with legal abortions than objected, and 2.5 times more agreed with the concept of assisted suicide for the terminally ill (with proper safeguards in place).

But the big surprises come in the attitudes to the separation of church and state.  78% thought that religion should be a private matter that government should not interfere with, whereas only 7% disagreed.  A similar proportion thought that religion should not have special influence on public policy.   Perhaps if UK could have a constitution we could arrange to have the same First Amendment as USA?

The really big consensus in the whole survey was about the law.  92% agreed, very reasonably, that the law should apply to everyone equally, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.  Take note Mr Prime Minister and Judges!  Ignore this at your peril.

It is time for Sharia to be outlawed in civilised countries!