Theories can never, ever be proven. All you can do is attempt to disprove them. Theories are called laws because they have stood the test of time, but even laws are unproven. Newton's Laws, by your definition, are no longer laws because they have been successfully disproven by facts supporting relativity. You need to get your money back if you were not taught that in college. Even in your field of geology, the theories are unproven. Where is the proof for plate techtonics, for example? That branch of science is analagous to evolution and it is in your own field.
took a year of paleontology as an undergrad, a very good course (two courses, actually), geared toward the evolutionary development of the phyla, not just taxonomy, and taught by an avowed atheist. The theory is as full of holes as the rock in this oil reservoir we are drilling.
So on what basis are you finding 'holes' in these theories? I suppose you already did graduate level work and research to back up this assertation? Or are these 'holes' the same type of 'holes' that exist in EVERY branch of science? The areas where further research is needed inorder to get a better understanding of the subject? Or do you believe that a scientific theory must be perfect and have no unaswered questions (i.e. holes) to be acceptable? If so, your understading of science is even worse than I imagined. Please dig holes in rocks and leave scientific research to those who know what science is.
You could equally postulate they were developed in a lab by aliens and dropped off here to see if they would form a viable ecosystem in the existing chemical environment, as a package. What leftovers survived from the last faunal assemblage are just germs in the petri dish. Go ahead, disprove it.
Okay, say we accept the missing transitional and ancestral forms as permissable "holes". Lots of roads, but the intersections are only implied, not documented.
If this is a viable and natural process, it should be occuring now, today. But the damning point is that there are no modern examples. Evolution involves more than killing off the unfit, there must be something new arise from all the fracas. Unless I am wrong, there have been no documented newly formed species. Simple as that. If you assert that there have been, please provide me a reference.
At that point aliens seem more probable for those who are willing to believe. (I choose not to.)
Yes, you can cut yourself on Occam's razor.
Plate Tectonics is far, far better substantiated--simply because continental drift is occuring on a daily basis. Those data exist. The plates jostle and grind, and we have earthquakes, subduction zones, ongoing crustal deformation, volcanoes, fault movement, new islands and volcanoes, new crustal formation at the ocean ridges, and even the occasional tsunami to show for it. Seismic data show what is down there. It can be measured, with repeatability.
The movement of the plates and their boundaries are measurable, again, with repeatability. The process can be observed.
Or do you believe that a scientific theory must be perfect and have no unaswered questions (i.e. holes) to be acceptable?
Like I told the other guy, don't put words in my mouth. A theory is a theory. Until you prove it, don't market it as fact. I have no problem with it being presented as a theory, a set of working assumptions, but not a fact.
Of course scientific theories have holes, without them, there would be nothing to research and the grants would dry up.
I notice you, too have this thing with asserting the correctness of your position by attempting to insult me.
How professional, how scientific.
If that is the state of scientific research, no wonder we are saddled with wailing about anthropogenic global warming and secondhand smoke.
I said that the theory of evolution is just that: a theory, unproven. You say :Theories can never, ever be proven.
So just what is there for you to take issue with?
Or would you rather decry one who provides the essential element of well conducted scientific inquiry, that of doubt?
Change the subject, shout them down?
Without doubt, any wild eyed assertion can be waved about as fact. Without doubt, there is no need to even attempt to develop proof, (which you say cannot be done). It is doubt which holds all scientific inquiry to higher standards, including that of peer review. Without some form of proof, empirical, repeatable, and documented, you only substitute a godless catechism for reason.