swansont

paragaster has been added

madmac has been suspended for a week for continually failing to meet the level of rigor we require in our speculations discussions

Air Between the Notes has been suspended 3 days for persistent thread hijacking resulting in preaching.

No, it's not. Despite the fact that you can do that as an algorithm, it's not the same concept.

We don't add feet to pounds, though, we multiply them. (You could have units of apple-oranges, too, under some bizarre set of circumstances where apple and oranges were a unit and not a description.) Adding different units doesn't happen.

pittsburghjoe has been banned for failing to improve his behavior after suspension: continually failing to support claims (i.e. soapboxing), on top of the sockpuppetry.

strangelove and giordani bruno have been banned as sockpuppets of farolero edit: add Hipaso to that list

Conway2 and ronnie33 have been banned as sockpuppets of rstormview

tkadm30 has been suspended a week for repeated thread hijacking and spamming nonsense

pittsburghjoe has been suspended a week for repeated posting of unsupported pet theories in the main science section, despite repeated direction not to do this. Update: Adding another week for violating the rule on sockpuppetry

! Moderator Note Speculation belongs in the speculations forum (and needs proper support for the discussion. Unsupported opinion is not enough). Please restrict feedback in this thread to mainstream physics, and stay on-topic.

! Moderator Note Moved to religion. Please clarify what it is you wish to discuss.

Tahir Gorgen has been added and will remain until he can learn to not hijack threads and not post nonsense

Or it's proof by contradiction

The Constitution is there to protect the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. So unless the majority is sufficient to pass an amendment, then such a law should not survive a court challenge at the district court level.

Just like a Christian Theocracy could happen here, if people start ignoring the Constitution.

In my OP I stated that the two are inseparable. I don't know how you come to ask the question, because my point has been that there is no prohibition on an individual practicing Sharia law (up to the point that an action violates the law) — it's fully compliant with the Constitution. And here you seem to imply I have stated the opposite of that. What can't happen is any religion using the government to force other people to follow their religious teaching.

We are predominantly a Judeo/Christian country because of who settled here early and in in greater numbers. The Constitution affords people the right to follow what religion they want to. As far as the laws of Moses and the Laws of Jesus, goes, we lifted rules that made sense in a secular fashion. Some of those are present in Islam, too. Do you really think Jesus cornered the market on "thou shalt not kill" (or the rest of the ten commandments)? ISIS is not the subject here, though. It's Sharia in the US, and how the fear surrounding it is propaganda pushed by the right. Individuals practicing Sharia law are as protected under the Constitution as a Christian is for following the tenets of Christianity. Adopting Sharia is as forbidden as adopting non-secular parts of Christian law. And that applies to all religions, not just ones tied to Moses. That is, for anyone who believes in the Constitution.

The subject of the discussion is Sharia in the US. So yes, it can happen elsewhere, but that's irrelevant to this particular discussion.

Yes, one can make crappy arguments. We don't do that in the US because we have no religious law, and a constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Remember, stoning is in the Bible, too. But no whipping? You should reread your history books.

From http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/100641-trump-protestors/?p=957919 I think it would be more accurate to say that your caricature of Sharia might not be compatible with our constitution and separation of church and state, but even that would be a stretch I will copy this rather than rewriting it, from another thread So Sharia is not "compatible with our constitution and separation of church and state" in the same way that wearing a yarmulke is not, wearing a cross necklace is not, not eating meat on Friday is not (if people still do that) or avoiding pork is not, or avoiding getting a tattoo or eating shellfish is not (if people actually avoid the things in Leviticus) or even saying "God bless you" after one sneezes is not. That is to say, it is in no way incompatible. As I said in the quote, the Constitution protects us from any laws that do not have a secular basis. That applies to all religions. You can't pass laws that exclude, or promote, a religion. Nobody is going to be able to pass a law that will stand a challenge that forces you to "Islamic things" (for lack of a better phrasing) any more than you can get a law to stand up to scrutiny that makes everyone do something that is exclusively Christian — unless there is a secular reasoning behind it. Murder, as an example, is called out as a sin in the Bible, but that's not why it's illegal. The first amendment says you can follow whatever religion you want, and the courts have said this is up until your practices break some secular law (no sacrificing virgins, for example), though you can still believe what you want. Your belief is sadly not grounded in fact. It's a spook story being passed around to make you afraid.

zbigniew.modrzejewski has been suspended three days for spamming the forums with multiple threads on the same topic, and hijacking other discussions. The garish use of text highlighting did not help matters.

After discussion among the moderating staff, blue89's suspension has been extended to a permanent ban.

! Moderator Note No. This was moved here: it is the official thread for surveys.

A reminder that warnings about staying on-topic are given not only because of the relevance of the post, but also the likelihood that the post will elicit responses that drag the discussion away from the OP.