The Athiest Foundation of Australia is running a campaign to get athiests to mark “No religion” under the “What is the person’s religion” question on the national census on August 9.

The message is this: writing “Jedi” or “Pastafarian” may be funny*. But unfortunately the people who read it won’t laugh. They’ll roll their eyes, and tick you off as “not defined”, which means you won’t be counted at all, and there’ll be a larger percentage of Christians counted than strictly correct. So if you are an athiest — and that means you don’t truly believe in a deity (even if you do go to church or were baptised), do the right thing and tick “No religion”.

*And not necessarily juvenile: Bill Shorten acts as if it’s just a childish joke, but I get that there is a deeper message here: why should people who believe in Jesus be taken seriously, but not people who believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?