Science

[ElementalDearWatson]

it takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does in some sort of deity (aetheism vs. ... theology? its hard enough to not piss anyone off with aetheism alone).

That's not true.  Evolution has tonnes of empirical evidence supporting it.  It's actually one of the most-tested theories in the history of science, and the evidence in support of it is overwhelming.

There is no comparable evidence for the existence of a deity at all.  And, indeed, while the more we learn about the history of life on this planet, the more evidence there is supporting evolution, the more you learn about the history of Christianity (to use your example), the more it should make you question its legitimacy. 

I can go into more detail, if you like, but I own a book called A History Of God by Karen Armstrong.  It's one of the best-researched books on the history of Christianity and, just so the author's bias is known, the author herself was a nun at the time.  This is also the version of the history of Christianity that it taught in seminary schools, so this is the history officially endorsed by the Church.  That history?  Christianity started off as a polytheistic religion of the Canaanites in which they elevated Yahweh, their god of War above the others. 

Read the Old Testament and try to square the man-like God who revels in the death and rape of the enemies of his peoples with the omnipotent God of Love of modern Christianity and it's a hard fit.  Read the Old Testament as a collection of re-written accounts of a limited god of War who was part of a pantheon and it makes perfect sense.

[OldTrees]

completely different rant kinda answering the FIRST question of this thread (kinda, not really) and responding to Hbosons post:faith typically means believing something when you don't quite have all the answers...

I am fairly confident that that definition of faith is too broad. You appear to be using "when you don't quite have all the answers" as equivalent to "when you do not have 100% recursive certainty". With this usage, everything except tautologies falls under "faith". Since it is not useful to scrutinize "1+1=2"  at the same level as "it will rain today" or "undetectable beings exist", we either need another definition of faith or we need another word to use to distinguish between the various percentages of recursive certainty.

Let us consider:
Belief: An opinion held about reality.
True Belief: An opinion held about reality that happens to be true.
Justified True Belief: An opinion held about reality that happens to be true and happens to be believed as the result of a valid argument.
Knowledge: An opinion about reality that is believed if and only if it happens to be true.

Now these definitions are useful in Philosophy and can give us some language tools for talking about different types of belief. However this language speaks from the position of assuming what is and is not true. We cannot classify Evolution as Justified True Belief because we are not sure it is true. So the most we can do before assuming truth values is divide beliefs into A(Belief if False, True Belief if True), B(Belief if False, Justified True Belief if True), and C(Belief if False, Knowledge if True).

it takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does in some sort of deity (aetheism vs. ... theology? its hard enough to not piss anyone off with aetheism alone).

So let's reevaluate this sentence with our new terms A, B, and C.
"Belief in Evolution and Belief in Divine Beings are both A" (technically it would be are either both A, both B or both C).
Now here I am going to diverge from the other scientists to say that yes this statement can be true, for specific individuals. The evidence for Evolution is not possessed by everyone. In fact, I noticed that every level of biology class went out of their way to correct the oversimplifications made by the previous biology class while also adding oversimplifications for the next level to correct. Evolution is not a simple concept like Gravity and the evidence for it is not simple either. A highschool student that just took Biology probably does not have enough evidence to be able to classify the process of Evolution as B rather than A. A college student that just took Biology 1 probably has enough evidence to classify the process of Evolution as B rather than A but does not have enough evidence to classify the history predicted by Evolution as B rather than A. However by the upper divisions of a Biology major I would say that if the student can trust the data collection, then they have enough evidence to classify the gross details of the history predicted by Evolution as B rather than A.

So depending upon the specific individual, their will be a qualitative difference between a belief in the Theory of Evolution(A or B depending on the individual) and a belief in a deity(A).

Science isn't completely infallible, and so is christianity or whoever you so please to believe in.

Agreed.

[Espithel]

As for what science means to me, it's rather simple:
Science is merely a slightly more modernized religion.
Nothing more.

[ElementalDearWatson]

As for what science means to me, it's rather simple:
Science is merely a slightly more modernized religion.
Nothing more.

With the difference being the science is proven to model the world accurately enough for those models to have utility.  In other words, science can provide us with information about the world with enough of a degree of accuracy and confidence that we can, for example, use that information to make something as technologically sophisticated as a satnav (rocket technology, LCD displays, special and general relativity, microchips, etc.).

Can you name one religion that you can say the same about?

[Espithel]

Some sects of Islam treat the world Allah made as a system with many tappings and workings that they can use and exploit, just like science, but that's besides the point; I was just told that somewhere, after all.

Just because science may or may not be slightly more accurate than other religions does not stop it from being one.
Just because the end result of science is different than other religions, doesn't mean it can't start in the same way.

[ElementalDearWatson]

Some sects of Islam treat the world Allah made as a system with many tappings and workings that they can use and exploit, just like science, but that's besides the point; I was just told that somewhere, after all.

Can you name any of these sects?

Just because science may or may not be slightly more accurate than other religions does not stop it from being one.

Well, it is more accurate, and by many orders of magnitude.  The modern scientific method has been as it is for 150 years.  Look at how much the world has changed because of it in that time.  Look at how much more we know.  Look at, as I said above, the fact that we can create satnavs - something that would be utterly unthinkable to people of 150 years ago.

Then look at the 200,000 years prior to that and how far the human race advanced in that time.

There really is no contest when it comes to which model better describes the world around us.

Just because the end result of science is different than other religions, doesn't mean it can't start in the same way.

The end result is that there is a result.  I'm typing this message on a computer.  Science works.

Again, the difference between science and a religion is that you need faith in order to believe in a religion.  Science is transparent, replicable, falsifiable, and the results of it are all around us and, as such, requires no faith. 

Is it flawless?  No.  Could the process of advancing science be improved?  Yes.  Can everybody understand every scientific result without years of education?  No. 

But the scientific method itself works.  Demonstrably so.  80 years ago there was no such thing as an electronic computer.  Now almost everybody in the Western world owns one they can hold in the palm of their hand.

You do not need to have faith in science, because it clearly, obviously, demonstrably, works.  And nobody who is communicating over the internet can deny that.