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How can we uphold the right to science? : Comments
By Jessica Wyndham, published 2/1/2009The Universal Declaration of Human Rights acknowledges the right to science as a human right equal to all others.
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Posted by work4hpb, Sunday, 4 January 2009 5:56:48 AM
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work4hpb
^I know that many people may not agree with me, but I consider myself to be a scientist.^ I consider you to be deluded. You should be angry with the person who put this meme into your brain. Please do not try to spread such nonsense. Posted by undidly, Sunday, 4 January 2009 6:50:08 AM
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The author writes: "On December 10 the world marked 60 years since the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a global framework for human rights, which includes the right to "share in scientific advancement and its benefits""
The above is not a right to science. The above is a right to have technology generated by science made available. A right to science would involve training in the scientific method which involves making hypotheses and testing them, thinking critically and examining the evidence on which assertions are based. I wish that type of thinking was universally promoted. It will not be because religious indoctrination, advertising, appeals to people to agree to go to war against others in a different nation and other emotional appeals would be made more difficult when addressed to a population conditioned to use the scientific method when examining assertions. Posted by david f, Sunday, 4 January 2009 3:58:29 PM
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Undidly,
And that is what is so wonderful about science. If you don't like what I've written, perhaps it is because you didn't spend 20 years studying the literature and 14 more years telling others your findings in order for them to turn a deaf ear. I don't especially like what I have written, but it is there for anyone with an interest to re-discover for themselves. I guarantee you that if you do the reading and analyzing you will find this idea present (behind veils), just waiting for someone to pick it up and explore with it. May I suggest an article in What is Evolution? magazine (recently changed to EvolutionNext) called "The REAL Evolution Debate" available for reading at http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j35/real-evolution-debate-intro.asp Theosophy is presented in Category #9 however it is grossly lacking in the presentation of my recent findings. I notified the editors recently, so we will see if they prefer my version of theosophy to the old standard one. Posted by work4hpb, Sunday, 4 January 2009 4:08:23 PM
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Carl Sagan remarked back in 1995;
'We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.' Governments must have a strong and decisive commitment to science education for the good of society. Scientific literacy in Western countries is not only essential for prosperity, but also for cultural identity. Newton, Darwin and Einstein are at the core of what it means to be Western. We forget about them at our peril. Posted by TR, Sunday, 4 January 2009 7:33:12 PM
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There are two schools of thought about rights: the positivist and the natural law.
The positivists start by denying that there can be rights as a matter of nature. Rights are a social construct, they say, and vary with culture and time. So rights are whatever society says they are. In modern society this means in effect that rights are whatever the state says they are. This is unsatisfactory for the reasons given. The natural law school starts by saying that rights have in common that they are enforceable. Thus they all necessarily concern the ethics relating to the use of violence or threats of violence – force - by one human or group of humans against another. A right is something you are ethically justified in using force to defend. The contents of rights are a social construct, not in the sense that they are arbitrary, but in the sense that they derive from the logic of human action. The starting point is that you own your own life. The right of self-ownership gives rise to all other rights. This must necessarily be so, says the natural law school, for two main reasons. Firstly, no-one can deny the proposition without self-contradiction. If you deny that you own your life, therefore you deny that you have the right to speak on your own account to make the denial. The illogic shows that the assertion is wrong. Secondly, anyone who denies the axiom of self-ownership implicitly asserts that someone else owns him. He must appeal to the absent authority of the person who owns him in order to participate in the debate. Quite apart from the absurdity, this is a slave philosophy. A philosophy of rights based on the idea that one can own the life of another against their will is self-evidently ethically wrong. Who will deny that? Posted by Diocletian, Sunday, 4 January 2009 8:17:03 PM
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Since that time, I discovered a higher kingdom of nature, spoken of by Jesus Christ, but clarified by THE SECRET DOCTRINE, by Blavatsky. This kingdom of nature makes a descent into form by pairing with and occupying the human form in a period of three races. At first, the kingdom hovers above our human, then the two exist side by side (6th human race), and then the girasas ascends the human to the "hovering above" state.
I challenge lawmakers and scientists to comprehend and connect what was written in the 19th Century in this new way and to make it possible for human beings to work with the girasas kingdom inside of them, happily and progressively.