Separation of Science and State

[Ranjr]

Hmm what do you consider a measurement to be? In other words, we know a measurement has occurred when what?

Ah, you intend to drag science into philosophical meandering.  You ask that question as if you've never performed or participated in an experiment.  I suggest you read this article.

Measurement in Science

[John 6IX Breezy]

I asked because your answer seems integral to your objection. Here's my answer:

Measurement is a method of observation. Observation is what's necessary in an experiment. As long as your method of observation remains the same, you can quantify that observation any way you want and it will not change the nature of the experiment nor it's outcome.

The Florida man will observe a change in consciousness whether or not he operationally defined that change as a score on an AVPU scale, RT to a given task, pupil dilation and other neurological presentations, or a straightforward yes or no response to a survey asking if his mood changed.

[Ranjr]

Thank you for sparring me the dialectic back and forth.

The data from the survey is both subjective and of limited value.  Neurological measurements would provide greater insight, especially when accumulated and analyzed from subjects across the panhandle.  But we don't get that from Florida Man's Friday night.  All we get is a news article.  "Florida man runs naked through Gator Mart, shouting I've seen God!  Skynyrd is God!  And Kid Rock is Jesus!"

Anyway, my point is that personal experiments, like when I was 5 and picked up a bee or climbed the antenna pole to the roof, wearing a batman costume, to see if capes make you fly, are not scientific experiments.  We shouldn't treat such a broad term as equal in all contexts.  

And I've forgotten how that fits into this conversation.

[The Grand Nudger]

John was trolling the boards with some shit he'd got wrong back on page 7.

Anywho, scientific and religious experimentation have been different, but there's no requirement that they be so. If a person makes normative statements relative to the sacred by referring to science, and by engaging in scientific experiments - they're experimenting, and doing science, and doing religion.

In fact, let's do a little thought experiment. We'll imagine a religion - The Church of the Secular Sacred.

This church is made up of a group of people who are morally united by their adherence to a set of beliefs and practices relative to the sacred that are entirely sourced from true scientific facts. If you ask them why they believe some article of their religion is true - they'll point you to the most recent edition of the most credible journal where it says in big bold letters that so and so has been conclusively demonstrated. If there's a paradigm shift, and whatever seemed conclusively demonstrated in the past turns out to be false, they change their beliefs in accordance. None of the things that people have criticized other religions for are true in the case of this religion.

Should this religion be subject to separation?

[John 6IX Breezy]

The data from the survey is both subjective and of limited value.  Neurological measurements would provide greater insight...

Given that drugs can affect conscious experience, if there are changes to it, a survey is more valuable than a neurological exam. That said, I understand your issue with the batman story, but experimentation comes in varying degrees. People commonly say babies are born scientists. They run experiments on the world and derive conclusions from it. Science is a formalized extension of that.

[Ranjr]

John was trolling the boards with some shit he'd got wrong back on page 7.

Anywho, scientific and religious experimentation have been different, but there's no requirement that they be so.  If a person makes normative statements relative to the sacred by referring to science, and by engaging in scientific experiments - they're experimenting, and doing science, and doing religion.

In fact, let's do a little thought experiment.  We'll imagine a religion - The Church of the Secular Sacred.  

This church is made up of a group of people who are morally united by their adherence to a set of beliefs and practices relative to the sacred that are entirely sourced from true scientific facts.  If you ask them why they believe some article of their religion is true - they'll point you to the most recent edition of the most credible journal where it says in big bold letters that so and so has been conclusively demonstrated.  If there's a paradigm shift, and whatever seemed conclusively demonstrated in the past turns out to be false, they change their beliefs in accordance.  None of the things that people have criticized other religions for are true in the case of this religion.

Should this religion be subject to separation?

 
You define a religion that functions as science.  As an engineer, I am less concerned with "what it is" and more interested in "what it does."  It's function takes precedence over the definition, which is something someone made up for the purpose of an argument.  Nevertheless, I like your point and would say it's the type of religion that other religions would want separate from state and declare unholy.

[The Grand Nudger]

Functionally, it does religion. It unites people in a moral whole over beliefs and practices relative to the sacred. Let's add a wrinkle. It's just soooo good at religion, that it becomes the majority religion of earth. Now we don't have to wonder what other religious people think about it, they're all gone like a common pagan.

There is only the Church of the Secular Sacred, and people who do not belong to any church. These people assert that we should write or change some law to conform to their religious beliefs.

(*worth pointing out that this isn't purely hypothetical, a religion of nature is a real thing - and these people begin to lay out their own case by showing how every other religion was also a religion of nature - one that fucked up on one or more items of natural fact - but still sought to communicate and explore items of fact, facts of exactly the sort as they lay claim to in error.)

[Ranjr]

It functions as religion because you say it does.  It's still hypothetical.  It would likely face immediate schism by members who don't care to describe science in terms of morality, a term thrown for the definition, but in practice is not measurable.

[The Grand Nudger]

It functions as a religion because it unites those people in a moral whole over beliefs and practices relative to the sacred. We don't separate church from state on account of moral questions being unmeasurable (and it's merely your belief that this is the case, in any case). Nor do we separate church from state on account of schismatic behavior, or exempt a monolithic religion from separation.

These are the sorts of things that I was hoping to bring out by bringing up a religion of nature (which is really, really not hypothetical). All of the complaints that it's superstitious, gone. All of the complaints that it's religious statements can't be proven, demonstrated, or aren't true.... gone. Just assume such a religion, and with that sort of religion in mind, what do we think about separation of church and state?

[John 6IX Breezy]

Definitions are designed to be descriptive not prescriptive; yet you treat them as diagnostic tools. Something as broad and diffused as religion cannot possibly be captured by such narrow and absolute terms. Religion is as living of an organism as the people in which it exists; whose entire biology changes from adherent to adherent as they interpret and enact it unto the world.