The right to objective sex education, not delivered through Catholic ethos
Atheist Ireland met Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O’Gorman last week. Afterwards, we wrote the following to the Minister about the right to objective sex education. Dear Minister O'Gorman, the right to objective sex education is infringed by allowing Catholic schools to deliver the state curriculum in accordance with ...
Atheist Ireland, Evangelicals, and Ahmadis meet Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O’Gorman
Atheist Ireland, along with our colleagues from the Evangelical Alliance and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, met Minister for Children and Equality Roderic O'Gorman this week. It was a very constructive meeting at which we discussed: The concept of freedom of religion or belief in human rights and constitutional terms, with ...
One in five Irish people either told census they have no religion (14%) or declined to answer (7%)
Over a million (or one in every five) Irish people either said they have no religion (14%) or declined to state a religion (7%) in last year’s census. In reality, the evidence of day to day life, including Church attendances, indicates that far more than one in five Irish people ...
Two levels of religious discrimination in solemnising marriages
Atheist Ireland has asked to meet Heather Humphreys, Minister for Social Protection, to discuss the religious discrimination in the Civil Registration Act that governs who can legally solemnise marriages. Here is the letter we sent to her this week. Dear Minister Humphreys, We would like to meet with you to ...
Atheist Ireland meets with Defence Forces Chaplaincy Review Board
Atheist Ireland met this week with Lt Col Padraig Brennan, chair of the Irish Defence Forces Review of the Chaplaincy service. Here are our thoughts and recommendations that we expressed at the meeting. The Defence Forces website states that “The Defence Forces are committed to promoting equality in all aspects ...
Marriage laws still discriminate for religions over humanists, and for humanists over atheists
In the marriage figures issued by the CSO the Humanist Association of Ireland solemnised 9.3% of all marriages in 2022. Since the introduction of the Civil Registration Amendment Act in 2012, the Humanist Association have been permitted to legally solemnise marriages. That has come at significant cost to them, because in ...
The 62 Types of Wedding Ceremonies in Ireland in 2022
Atheist Ireland has obtained figures from the CSO showing the 62 types of wedding ceremonies in Ireland in 2022. They range from Roman Catholic to the Rites of Passage of the Indigenous Wisdom Tradition of Celtic Druid Temple. Only about 44% were some variation of what would currently be considered ...
One in five Irish marriages now spiritualist
One in five Irish weddings last year were spiritualist ceremonies, according to information obtained by Atheist Ireland last week. This is twice the number you would think from the published CSO statistics, which hide half of the spiritualist marriages under the label ‘other religious’. This means fewer than 45% of ...
Catholic weddings return to steady decline
The number of Catholic weddings has recovered from its dramatic drop during Covid, and has returned to the pattern of steady decline that has been happening for the past decade. In the decade since 2012, the percentage of Catholic weddings has dropped from 65.2% to 40.5%, and nonreligious weddings (civil ...
ChatGPT learns about atheism
The Artificial Intelligence app ChatGPT wrote a nursery rhyme about God, but it would not write a nursery rhyme about atheism, because it said it cannot generate inappropriate or sensitive content. After a lengthy discussion about AI training data, freedom of religion or belief, discrimination, and ethics, ChatGPT then said it ...