If a large portion of the population does not value or understand science, how can you have a rational debate on values?
You'd resist those policy proposals, and I think most people would. You'd base that resistance on your values - values, which in this case at least, you did NOT derive from the scientific consensus.
My point is there are non-scientific origins for value systems, and they are more real and valid than scientifically derived ones - science can only give you facts about the material universe.
That last part is a value statement that I doubt science could prove.
Even if free will is rule-based at some low-level, that doesn't erase the concept of rights.
We have rights even among inanimate objects. For instance, some server instance has rights to access certain files.
Rights are not pinned to free will. They are mostly about declaring certain unwanted actions of others to be wrong and punishable. Whether those unwanted actions are the result of free will, or whether they are deterministic, is immaterial. At most, that consideration only influences how we regard a violation of right; we might be somewhat more lenient if we believe that it was inevitable.
This is why the criminal courts take a particular view toward defendants who are mentally deficient or insane; in effect, this is based on the belief that those people possess less free will. It is never declared, however, that whatever they did was OK.
You're really positing this as actual serious intellectual output? Just because it uses the same word does not mean that "rights" in the context of a server instance has anything to do with rights in the context of human rights. <facepalm>
This is a pretty important distinction.
> and therefore, human rights are an outdated concept
is a value judgement that cannot be derived from scientific principles.
The fact that mankind is responsible from global warming has nothing to do with needing to do something about it, or what exactly should be done. But it's always spoken about in terms of "science insists we must do something/this about it".