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prase comments on The ethics of breaking belief - Less Wrong Discussion
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What does "essentially" mean here? Out of all European Catholics I know none I would call an essential atheist. On the other hand, I know at least one essentially atheistic European Protestant.
58% of French people consider themselves Catholic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France
34% of French people assent to: "I believe there is a God". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe
Of course, there are methodological issues and this doesn't prove the matter definitively, but it certain suggests that a lot of French people are "cultural Catholics" the way we have "cultural Jews" in the US.
Well, originally you have written "all European Catholics". I don't dispute the existence of cultural Catholics.
I think that "Consider all the European Catholics who are essentially atheists" should be read as "Consider all the {European Catholics who are essentially atheists}", not "Consider {all the European Catholics}, (who are essentially atheists)".
Like CuSithBell, I'll plead the restrictive relative clause interpretation, bolstered by the absence of a comma. I'll also plead common sense as an ambiguity resolution tool. And not only do we have the existence of cultural Catholics, we've got as our first estimate a minimum (if every God-believing French person were a Catholic) of 41% of Catholics who don't subscribe to a vital church teaching.
I apologise for misinterpretation, then. The intended reading didn't occur to me.