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Originally Posted by FireFly

Possible. And yet all over the world people convert to various things. Christians in China, etc. I've taken a number of religious studies courses to expose myself to various religions. I like the philosophies of many. My being Christian is a result of my beleiving in Jesus Christ. Not because I don't think the others are wrong.

True people do covert from one thing to another, but I didn't say that where someone is is the sole indicator of what religion they will be, just the primary one.

Originally Posted by FireFly

I've also taken a number of courses in geology, archaeolgy, etc. I understand the theories quite well, thank-you.

Your questions would seem to indicate otherwise. For example, you say "And isn't it fantastic how each species fills a niche perfectly?", that you would even put this up as an example of a hole in evolution demonstrates you do not understand evolution.

You talk about huge holes like they weaken science, but the opposite is true.. the holes are usually very well understood, the questions that the new theory must answer are very well defined.

Originally Posted by FireFly

I also understand the reasons scientists say there are holes. I don't think it fills in the holes. If you beleive that the explaination is sufficient, good for you. Alas, 'good enough' doesn't mean it's correct.

I don't get what you are trying to say here. If there is a hole that just means there is a lack of information, or a lack of understanding, or insufficient imagination with respect to creating a new hypothesis. It's not like science just throws up its hands and says "we'll never understand this".

Science is never "correct", not in the sense of being right or being True. Science is accurate or inaccurate.

There was a time when gravity was not understood, and now we understand it a lot better, if you lived in a time when gravity was not understood do you look at that and say "there's a hole science will never fill therefore... what? God?"

Originally Posted by FireFly

There's a lot of stuff I don't know. There's a lot of stuff I don't care about as well. It doesn't bother me. You seem to have a lot of faith that science will indeed eventually answer your questions.

No, it's not faith. Because science had demonstrated repeatedly over time that it can "answer" any question about the natural world, given enough information and imagination. That's not faith, that's trust based on a demonstrated history. You don't have faith that the airplane you are boarding will fly, you trust it will because every other airplane properly built and piloted flies.

Originally Posted by FireFly

Again, it boils down to the same thing. For a very long time, scientist held fast to the indisputable truth that the earth was flat. They were proven wrong. There are things we know now that will be proven false in the future.

Of course there are.. gravity as we know it is wrong, and we KNOW it's wrong. We even know how it is wrong, and we know how a new theory of gravity must look to address the current theory's deficiencies.

There's two problems with what you say here. First is you use the words "indisputable truth". Science makes no claims to be "indisputable truth". In fact quite the opposite, science fully admits that all knowledge is transient, every theory is simply the best theory available at any time to explain a given phenomenon. That is it's fundamental strength.

Second, you seem to think that when things are shown to be wrong in science, that somehow the old theory gets tossed out. This is not true.

The earth is not flat, but if you are working with a small enough area of its surface, you can safely treat it as flat and still come out with accurate answers to questions. The earth is not a sphere, but for some things you can safely treat it as a sphere.

Gravity again is a good example. Einstein completely changed how gravity is viewed, however Newton's theories about gravity are still very much valid, as long as you don't go too fast or space doesn't curve too much. You can put up satellites or go to the moon without Einstein, but for GPS to operate or to calculate the orbit of Mercury Newton isn't enough.

More on this here: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScien...ityofWrong.htm

Originally Posted by FireFly

I never claimed to KNOW there's a God. I believe it. Science tells me to trust it when it says that it's explainations are sufficient to fill the gaps.

But you claim to know that there are things that science will never be able to explain... again care to support that?

I don't see how science is telling you to trust it in saying that its explanations are sufficient to fill in the gaps. As I said it's quite the opposite, gaps are very much understood and defined in science, and science doesn't say "trust us", it says "I don't know, good question, lets try to find an answer".

To fill a gap with God in my mind does two things.. it limits God, confining God to an ever smaller set of roles, and it presumes an answer that isn't necessary (every other physical phenomenon has been explained through natural processes, why does this one all of a sudden get God plugged in).