Scientists do not only devise experiments in order to prove something. Lots of experiments are designed to disprove a hypothesis, and lots of others are designed to repeat previous experiments. A hypothesis gains general acceptance only if its experiments are repeatable, and only if it survives all attempts to disprove it. Even a well-established and widely-accepted hypothesis may still be superseded later, if someone devises a new hypothesis which better explains the facts. Quite often new discoveries are reported rather tentatively, and are later shown to be wrong. This process is what gives us confidence in the scientific method generally. If you put forward a hypothesis which is untestable and undisprovable in principle, and inaccessible to any form of rational enquiry, then it is not part of science; and if you nevertheless claim the hypothesis is true, then it is part of religion. Therein lies the difference.
Don't worry Tom, I didn't take anything badly. I just think that there is quite a lot of ignorance around about Switzerland, which is often seen as an obscure mountainous fastness divorced from the real world. It's not really like that. I think it was very poor form to ban minarets, but that is one of the side effects of direct democracy. The UDC which tabled both this referendum and the immigration limits one, is a sort of UKIP if you like. The difference is that in the UK, UKIP aren't really going to get any power, whereas here, the UDC is not only a powerful party, but the popular initiative system means that anything can be put to referendum if you get enough signatures. The minaret vote was not Switzerland's finest hour and was totally unnecessary. But I wonder.... If you had a popular referendum in the UK to ban the further building of minarets - are you so sure that it wouldn't pass? I'm not. There are Daily Mail readers aplenty in the UK, not to mention the Sun, The Torygraph, etc. It was a ridiculous vote because there are plenty of planning permission hoops to jump through here, and anyone can object to a new building, no matter what it is. There wasn't any need to add the banning of the building of minarets (new ones, that is) to the constitution. But that is what has happened. I think the essential difference in Britain is that (a) there are far more Muslims than here and (b) the British have a sort of minority fetish. They are terrified of upsetting minorities and sometimes take that to absurd lengths. They were worried enough about upsetting the Scots and the Welsh (maybe less so the Irish). Now they are terrified about upsetting Muslims. They are happy to celebrate their inclusiveness (which is a good thing) but less happy to celebrate the things that make England and Britain different from the rest of the world. A pity.
Britain has exported to the rest of the world so many things - including the English language and literature, the common law, costume, the science and technology of the industrial revolution - that UK is not so different from the rest of the world. Nations which never succeeded in spreading their culture worldwide are better able to preserve it locally. One of the paradoxes of history.
