How do you deal with a religious family?

[genkaus]

No it isn't, we do it all the time and we do it in courts as well. It's how we associate things together like actions and consequences. It is absolutly used in court - you can demonstrate that your witness is "reliable" or demonstrate that he is "unreliable", for instance, and that is using the "by association" principle.

Reliability of a witness isn't related to anything he is associated with - it is depends directly upon what he says and does.

As far as science is concerned there are an unlimited number of valid theories.

And only one way to become a valid theory - get evidence.

In science, they generally like the more simple theories over the more complicated ones.

Not if the simple ones don't have any evidence for them.

Or let me repeat the historical argument I already gave you: prior to the 1980's there were Egyptologists who theorised that the pyramids were build by Egyptian workers, and not by slaves. They had no direct evidence for the theory, yet they still had it. Later it would be effectively proven correct.

Let me correct you: prior to the 1980's there were Egypthologists who hypothesized that the pyramids were build by workers. But since they had no evidence for it, it remained a hypothesis. Now that they do have actual evidence for it (graves of workers), it is now a valid theory. This theory is falsifiable - if tomorrow we find that the people in those graves had nothing to do with building pyramids or that slaves were given an honorable burial because of their work on pyramids - the theory would be falsified and invalidated and its back to the drawing board.

There are plenty of other examples in history of why these theories are important - they direct what you look for and consequently where. Many very important archaeological discoveries have been made off the back of theories (eg I think that there was people here in such and such a time and we're going to look for their remains).

Those theories are more than just guess-work - as you seem to suggest. They have a lot of other evidence going for them.

The trap that you're falling into is telling people that they can't think for themselves, they can't have their own ideas, they can't make their own theories, they can't think outside the box and produce non-logical theories.

They should think for themselves, they can have their own ideas, they can make up their own hypothesis - but they can't make up their own facts and they can't make up evidence. Which is why they can't make up their own theories.

Well I've just explained why they are, and there's other reasons too.

Nope.

Right, and what have you done about it? Have you formed an interest group, have you attended town meetings to voice your concerns? Did you join a political party and suggest the party take the position that prostitution should be legalised for the greater benefit of the community? Did you do any of this, or are you just complaining because something is not the way you would like it?

are you just complaining because something is not the way you would like it - this.

Minority rights are an interesting thing. In the 1980's, here in Australia, we prevented an AIDS epidemic from happening here, however it was largely done by the three communities themselves: the gay community (more specifically the men who are sexually active with other men), the sex workers and the injecting drug users. This of course was backed by government, but essentially they themselves needed to tackle the issue.

It does show what minorities can do when they are empowered to do so.

The only one of those groups which was controversial was the injecting drug users, because people said "they're just junkies, they're not a real community or group". Yet they proved otherwise by taking action against AIDS, which was only possible by mobilising and taking action as a community.

How exactly is this relevant to minority rights?