Yazata:
My education is more in philosophy, and in religious studies. (I can sense atheist hackles rising...)
You can't resist having a dig, can you?
Why should an atheist be upset that you've studied religion? More than a few atheists have quite extensive backgrounds in studying religion, just like you.
As an atheist, I think that if you believe in a god or gods than you most likely don't hold that belief for reasons that have a strong rational defence. But that's something atheists have to live with, given the sheer numbers of people who believe in gods and the supernatural for what are, in the end, not very good reasons.
If anything, I feel sorry for you if you're stuck believing in some sort of god. On the other hand, people can and do extricate themselves from religion, so maybe you will too.
So my interest here has historically been in the philosophy and religion fora. But interesting conversation there has largely ceased recently.
That probably happened about the time you put me on your mental "ignore" list, when the list of ideas you preferred not to hear or think about it got too long for your personal comfort level. Funny, that.
There might arguably be too many 'fringe' categories. They could perhaps be reduced to one 'fringe' forum. But that's not a big deal in my opinion.
Back in the day, we had a since Pseudoscience forum. Some members complained. The matter was put to a vote, and here we are.
'Cesspool' is an interesting question. I personally think that board participants should be free to post there, without any moderation apart from removing posts that might be a legal threat to the board.
This is not an "anything goes" forum. This forum is moderated. Our tag line is "intelligent community". The idea is that whatever ends up in the cesspool is largely unintelligent. The point at which a thread finds its way to the cesspool is the point where we want to stop encouraging further stupidity or time-wasting disruption.
If you think you want an unmoderated forum, there are a few out there. Please try them out, by all means. This will not happen here - at least, not while I remain a moderator/member.
But crank threads should probably go to 'fringe' if they have actual content that makes sense.
They already do. Lots of them.
But don't confuse it with "Free Thoughts", which I take to be more of an 'off-topic' forum for lighter conversation.
Note that there's already a "Post whatever" thread in "Free Thoughts". I'm in two minds as to whether that thread serves any useful purpose. At the moment, I'm coming down, slightly, on the side of saying that it does (which is why it is still open), but it's a fine line.
Personally, if my desires be known, I'd eliminate 'politics', 'ethics' and fora like that, which seem to serve as little more than left-political clubhouses for bashing conservatives.
With that, you're telegraphing your own political leanings, I think. Perhaps you missed some of our more provocative right-wing contributors. Perhaps you're unaware that a few are still with us.
Discussions of ethics demand a certain level of maturity because there are inevitably disagreements. That is tre of a lot of philosophical issues, but people tend to me more emotionally invested in what they consider to be ethical questions. Ethics, as a philosophical discipline, ought to be about reasoned arguments (as academic philosophy is more generally). Reasoned arguments don't have an inherent political bias. They stand or fall on their merits, intellectually.
Strange idea: "left political clubhouse ethics".
I think that, increasingly, people these days confuse ethical questions with political ones. That's not to say that ethics is inapplicable to politics - that's a different matter.
They are hugely divisive and there's nothing even remotely scientific about their content, which is even more off-topic on an ostensible science board than 'fringe' is.
You're not very consistent.
If your real concern was that all topics here should be "scientific", that would seem to eliminate discussion of a lot of the favorite topics you listed: the 'demarcation' science/pseudoscience distinction, the nature of evidence, what sort of assumptions we should bring to our analysis of evidence, hypothesis generation, objective/subjective, science/scientism and all kinds of stuff like that.
What you seem to want is that topics you approve of or enjoy should be discussed, while those that you're not interested in, or less interested in, should not be allowed.
Also, as I have said before, sciforums has never been a dedicated "science board", in the sense that we have restricted discussions here to scientific matters. Religion, for instance, has been here from the start.
Perhaps you should re-read our mission statement, such as it is, as expressed in our site Posting Guidelines. Your image of what you think sciforums is or ought to be is somewhat different from what I think it is and ought to be, for starters. More generally, I think that the majority of our membership has expectations that different somewhat from yours.
