"Experimental theologians if you're being formal? Or is particle physics and philosophy treated as a different form of study in your world?"

"Philosophers do like... what is the meaning of life, and theologians are like, how do we interpret Scripture, and particle physics are like how are all these particles bopping around, they're totally different."

"Huh. My world's philosophers do what's the meaning of life and what are the rules everything in life follows and why, and theologians do interpretation of Scripture and study of Creation and interpretation of Creation? And then physics emphasizes studying movement, and experimental theology emphasizes studying what the world is like, rather than interpreting its meaning?"

"I guess that's a way to do things!"

"It seemed like the only way, it's interesting that it can be done differently. Are experimentation and research completely non-religious in your world, or do your theologians and philosophers still interpret discoveries about the world, but without participation?"

"I guess they interpret things? You get newspaper articles about what the Church thinks of a new biotech thing or whatever."

"Cool. It seems like poorly executed studies with a specific intended conclusion that hope to sway religious policy might happen less often that way. Does the Church set legal policy from its interpretation of research and technological development? Which kinds of technology does it generally have official opinions about?"

"I really don't know a ton about this. Uh, you need special permission to go on birth control and if a new medicine comes out which depresses fertility they decide whether that counts?"

"Okay, I can stop asking about it. I'm not sure if we have that in particular, but it sounds like one of the same categories. I suppose the control systems of your world have empirically produced superior technology."

"Control systems?"

"Sorry, it's not a specifically meaningful phrase. I just meant that the systems of laws and culture your world has seem to have led you to develop technology ahead of ours. Possibly with the exception of particle-discovery, if you actually have Rusakov particles, but if your world doesn't have external souls or magic, then I'd imagine that they won't be very practically useful?"

"Yeah, not obvious what you'd do with them. But Oliver says that about lasers, somebody invented lasers but didn't know what they were for and now they're for a jillion things."

"That matches! When I was young, I thought it would be possible to make a perpetual motion machine with them, but it didn't work out. Who's Oliver?"

"He's this missionary with an online mission, I started talking to him to find somebody to talk to a Gileadite I follow on Tumblr who was having problems."

"Oh. I suppose an internet would allow for remote missions. Tumblr is a server on the internet?"

"It's a website, I guess that's like a server."

"Neat! Was he able to help?"

"I don't really know, I don't get updates. I hope so."