I can accept that as long as it comes with the admission that the whole thing is a belief system equal to any religious one.
Not at all. In fact, it isn't a "belief system" the way that, say, Christianity is, because Christianity does not depend on reproducible material results - in fact, it refuses to put any necessary weight on such results - whereas science is, at bottom, nothing but reproducible results.
Very simple to illustrate. Do you believe in the miracle of the virgin birth? If you do, then you must grant that your belief is founded on something other than the reproducibility of that event. On the other hand, as science is limited to material events that are reproducible, the most that a legitimate scientist can say is: that could never happen unless it were a miracle. To which the believing Christian will say: "precisely." Notice, in particular, that the scientist cannot categorically state that the virgin birth never happened - for one thing, no scientist living now was there in person to witness the birth, or more importantly, the conception - the most that the legitimate scientist can state are the preconditions that would have to be filled in order for such an event to occur consistent with what we know about the material universe, which is, precisely, that a miracle would be needed - that is, God's direct intervention into the material universe.
But why should we believing Christians view that as a knock against us or our beliefs? That is precisely what we believe the virgin birth to have been - a miracle: an irruption of the divine and the metaphysical into the physical, material universe, to cause the occurrence of an event that could not have transpired absent such divine intervention.
But that highlights one of the principal differences between science and religion - at least Christianity - science is built upon a foundation of reproducibility that permits one to oblige other people to accept one's views of the universe - by reproducing the event or property with respect to which one is attempting to enforce belief. That, of course, also limits the scope of what science can, and cannot, discourse upon because science simply cannot say anything meaningful about an event that is, by its very nature, not reproducible. Christianity, on the other hand, seeks to bring others to the light by means of non-obligatory persuasion. That is, for His own reasons, some of which He has touched upon, God does not seek to coerce or demand belief, He seeks merely to persuade. One is entirely free to choose non-belief, although that saddens God beyond our mortal ken, and the consequences of that non-belief, while they are there, are not used by God either as a means to bludgeon people into belief.
