The only other topic that hues anywhere close to the GAE mission is responding to I.D. assertions.
Can you propose a 3rd area of legitimate discussion?
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Weâve been discussing religion in this very thread while youâre talking over us and claiming we canât discuss religion.
But in any case, thereâs a reason this forum is called Peaceful Science and not Peaceful Religion.
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No. I am assessing the detrimental effect of word choice in one of our mission statements.
The wording, here and elsewhere, needs revision to keep advancing the focus of GAE.
Science CAN peacefully accept the existence of a limited number of religious ideas.
Do you think PeacefulScience should include attempts to convince Evangelicals that the whole field of theism is irrational and void?
If so, how exactly does such discussion breed trust?
No one is asserting that. Discussing religious ideas isnât the same as trying to convince others that theyâre wrong. And if some are doing that, there are people on the other side trying to convince them of the opposite thing.
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Well, Iâm curious about what you do in your spare time, when you arenât busy telling other people what they should and shouldnât talk about.
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Speaking of âDiabolical Argumentsâ, can anybody present a widely-accepted definition of science that âCAN peacefully accept the existence of a limited number of religious ideasâ?
Are you suggesting that science is completely incompatible with religion? Of course science canât assess the claims of religion, but thatâs not the same as saying that it canât coexist with religion. There are many religious scientists, and as far as I know, theyâre not all victims of severe cognitive dissonance.
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I canât think of ANY definition of science that would (or could) deny the existence of religious ideas. You should reword your question to make it something other than preposterous.
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What is good for the goose is good for goose is good for the ganderâŚ
If you canât propose a 3rd category, isnt that consistent with my complaints?
Try to imagine my multi-year frustration with PS.orgâs campaign to âbuild trustâ being pummeled to smithereens by the endless repetition that humans dont need God to explain any part of creation!?
No. I am merely suggesting that religious ideas are not amenable to the scientific methodology, and thus that science cannot either âacceptâ or reject religious ideas.
Similarly, aesthetic ideas are not amenable to the scientific methodology, so science cannot either âacceptâ or reject them That does not mean that âscience is completely incompatible withâ aesthetics.
I would suggest that there is a middle ground between âdeny[ing]â and âaccept[ing]â something. There is the position of not having an opinion or, further, that an opinion cannot be formed within the methodology under consideration.
(Parenthetically, this does not however mean that science cannot settle empirical claims, even when those empirical claims may be the result of religious ideas.)
So I repeat my question, with an (I would think) obvious clarification:
can anybody present a widely-accepted definition of science that âCAN peacefully accept [NOT merely fail-to-deny] the existence of a limited number of religious ideasâ?
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Who said I couldnât? You donât answer my questions, and I see no need to answer yours. Your multi-year frustration is a phenomenon inside your head. Why is it, do you think, that youâre the only one complaining?
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Why arenât they? I would say that some are and some arenât. YEC, for example, is a religious idea. Are you saying that it canât be falsified? Granted, we need to make certainly auxiliary assumptions about what God would or would not have done (not falsify the record, for example), but given those YEC is easily testable. By science!
Please note that I also wrote:
The existence of a global flood in the last few thousand years, for example, would appear to be an âempirical claimâ, so an explicit exception to my original point.
However purely religious ideas, like âwhat does it mean for humanity to be created âin the image of Godâ?â or âhow many angels can dance on the head of a pin?â would appear not to be amenable to scientific resolution â if for no other reason than that science would seem incapable of developing a scientifically-meaningful definition of âGodâ or âangelâ.
In fact, if you take âacceptâ to include âneither accept nor denyâ, as @misterme987 & @sfmatheson appear to have above, I would still question whether science that âCAN peacefully accept the existence of [only] a limited number of religious ideasâ â but for a near-opposite reason â that I think that far more than merely a âlimitedâ number of religious ideas can be neither accepted nor denied, as only a tiny fraction of religious ideas would seem to entail empirical claims.
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I agree, but the problem is that your sentence refers to the existence of such ideas, and that makes the whole paragraph look sloppy and inane.
Do you mean to ask about a definition â better thought of, in my opinion as a view â of science that accept a (limited number of) religious ideas? If so, I think the answer is obviously yes since you havenât done the real work of defining what a âreligious ideaâ is.
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This relies on the definition of âpurely religious ideaâ, which seems unclear. If we accept that it means âuntestable ideaâ or âidea with no consequences for dataâ then of course youâre right by definition, and science can have no intersection with such ideas. Language is causing all sorts of problems here. Accepting the existence of a religious idea is not at all the same thing as accepting the idea or finding it useful. It isnât quite clear what is being claimed, so hard to know whether to accept that claim.
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A few points:
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As PSâs lengthy Mission and Values page appears to make no explicit mention of GAE (beyond citing the book as a reference), it is hard to see how the GAE is a âmissionâ of this site that is more âlegitimateâ than any other.
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Given that this siteâs mission is to be âpeacefulâ, and the lack of of any non-vacuous content within ID nearly-ubiquitously leads discussion between scientists and IDers to be acrimonious, it is questionable the extent to which engagement of ID is encompassed within this siteâs mission.
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I would suggest that any peaceful discussion of science would count as an âarea of legitimate discussionâ.
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The passage ârefer[ing] to the existence of such ideasâ was a quote, not my own.
If you feel that the concept of âreligious ideaâ is insufficiently clear, then the answer would seem to be âobviouslyâ âI donât knowâ rather than âyesâ. 
Can you come up with any sensible definition of âreligious ideasâ for which science would âacceptâ/âgive agreement toâ even a limited number of them?
I would have thought it was reasonably clear from the context that a âpurely religious ideaâ was one that did not âentail empirical claims.â This, as I said, would seem to encompass the vast bulk of religious ideas.
âAccepting the [bare] existenceâ of any idea is tautological, once the idea has been stated â itâs mere statement is incontrovertible proof of the ideaâs existence. I was assuming that the statement that I was merely quoting meant more than this utterly trivial point.
But given that everybody is more interested in splitting hairs (and not even my own hairs, but somebody elseâs that I was merely quoting), I see no point in continuing this further.
No flouncing, please. Itâs difficult to tell what people are saying at several points in this thread, so the hairs must be split if weâre to understand any of it. Is your understanding of what @gbrooks9 said the same as his? Is it the same as @sfmathesonâs? Thatâs by no means clear.