Separation of Science and State

[The Grand Nudger]

Reporters can be prosecuted for divulging the contents of classified research. Reporters cannot be prosecuted for divulging the contents of a religion.

No one has any specific right to, or to do, science. It is well within a states authority to completely shut down entire avenues of research, and nothing other than an existential dilemma prevents them from shutting the whole thing down. The boys from the manhattan project couldn't stand on a street corner describing the construction of a bomb, they'd have been buried under a prison - and it doesn't matter how much a geneticist complains that human animal hybrids are his science..... but you and anyone else are perfectly free to stand on that same street corner and babble about ghosts. It's your religion.

As thre major religions of the world scramble to include or appropriate science, and as people begin to construct new scientific religions, and as science takes the place of norm setting in the minds of more people (and more religious people) we probably will have some issue or question over assertions to religious laws that have the backing of science. We write them off now as not having that, but when they do....trouble trouble. People who are generally and genuinely committed to the idea of science as a guide for our laws are already on path to being united in a moral whole. The big bad religion that sweeps away these protections probably wont be some version of a haunted house story - it will be our religion of nature..this is already the kind of religion that the superstitious and skeptical seek. It's the kind of religion that carl sagan opined on dreamily. One that would draw on an immense source of power, and..ostensibly, accrue power - then use it.

[John 6IX Breezy]

No one has any specific right to, or to do, science.

I disagree with your interpretation.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's something you do have a right to do - what you couldn't do, if it were my religion, is criminalize it.

You can criminalize a science. We've done so. We will continue to do so.

[John 6IX Breezy]

You cannot conclude on account of libel or classification that we have no freedom of speech or press. You have freedom to do and report science except for when it is classified, and you have freedom of speech expect for when it is libel or slander.

You cannot criminalize science; you can perhaps criminalize specific unethical lines of research. Much like you cannot criminalize religion, but you can criminalize specific unethical religious practices.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's no "except for", in the case of belief. You are free to believe whatever you do.

I can point to your unethical line of religion - but can't criminalize it on account of that.

Are you really trying to dispute the fact that religious beliefs are acknowledged as rights while science is not? Congress shall make no law...unless it's an unethical religion?

I think we're getting closer and closer to your candid feelings on the matter of separation of church and state, and, by extension, your feelings on it's relationship to science.

[Brian37]

There's something you do have a right to do - what you couldn't do, if it were my religion, is criminalize it.

You can criminalize a science.  We've done so.  We will continue to do so.

Unfortunately our species has had far more a tendency to do that, than to accept science.

You can not only criminalize science, you can bastardize it like Joseph Mengele and Hitler did.

I get sick of any religion, and they all do it, bar none, when they cherry pick science to get it to point to their club, as if human ability to discover is a patent owned by one religion. 

But at the same time, I have seen apologists of every religion worldwide, bar none, suddenly reject science when it doesn't point to their club.

[John 6IX Breezy]

There's no "except for", in the case of belief. You are free to believe whatever you do.

You cannot criminalize beliefs of any kind, religious or scientific, because beliefs are thoughts. You can, however, criminalize practices.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not on account of not being able to criminalize thoughts. Thinking this is an example of the same ignorance that leaves us incapable of describing why a scientific religion is subject -and- leaves you incapable of describing why science should be.

Besides, we're told that hatecrime is only a step away from thoughtcrime. That making it criminal to say, for example, the hateful things you truly believe not only injures your right to speech, but criminalizes your state of being de jure or de facto.

There are no such protections for science. If you cannot do the research, you cannot do the science. If the science is illegal, or if it's distribution is illegal, you cannot talk about it. If you believe it, and the state is set against it, they have criminalized your state of being. Here, at least, there's parity. One place where believing in things for religious reasons and believing in things for scientific reasons actually is qualitatively equivalent.

One is specifically protected, the other is not. Religious beliefs sourced exclusively from science, however, would be. If what you're hoping to suggest, in questioning whether science entirely aside from religion should be subject to separation like religion - is to afford it greater protection and greater privilege and declare it a right - by all means, have at it. I'm pointing out that it aint in there.

---

More food for thought - I think that we can find and point out strange incongruencies in this, no matter what our position on a given issue may be, because the people who wrote our rights wrote about what they knew. They were familiar with religious oppression but they weren't familiar with the sci fi conundrums that modern daily life brings up. I think that laws written with that set of concerns in mind will be challenged by some future religion (just as religion has challenged them in the past) - our track record here isn't hopeful. We fail time and time again, here - and precisely because it surrounds a thing or things that unite us morally - for better and for worse.

[Deesse23]

There's no "except for", in the case of belief.  You are free to believe whatever you do.

You cannot criminalize beliefs of any kind, religious or scientific, because beliefs are thoughts. You can, however, criminalize practices.

Have you ever coveted your neighbours wife?

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't know whether you're expecting any rational consistency here - but you shouldn't. John isn't arguing from fact or even from his own genuine beliefs - but from the perception that he needs to posture before some unknown hammer falls.