I am of average intelligence and may be a little ignorant here, but it feels to me that there is almost as much faith involved in science as there is in religion. I don't believe in a god or gods and I like the idea that science is based on facts. can something that is still considered a theory be taken as true?

Apparently you don't what the word "theory" means when it pertains to science.

Can you pertain yourself as a theory? Science is based on fact, yes. Its also sometimes based on lies. A theory can only be fact when it is proven. Religion in other hand may only worked by faith. It may not be proven in any scientific way but it is a total proof that there is an origin before evolution exist in all matter. Life is a living miracle.

Let me quote Robert Krampf, a.k.a. the Happy Scientist:



In short, you may disagree with a scientific theory about gravity, but you will still go "Splat!" if you jump out of an airplane without a parachute.

Theosophy shows that the eternity belong to the past, science is a hypothesis of knowledge it assumed that the absolute zero is a starting point, but this is not a reliable truth, because if I shift the zero point of reference as it is understood .. all the calculations and assumptions used ... will have a different meaning

if you shift that Point,you have falsified Facts,and therefore nothing will be true any longer!

Absolute Zero is a Fact,because it has worked in discovering other Scientific Facts!
Science is not arbitrary assumptions.

Actually,a Hypothesis comes way before a Scientific Theory!
It is the startingpoint to a possible Theory,if the discovered Facts will bear out the Hypothesis!
If you arbitrarily start changing things on a whim,you have Anarchy,not Science!

A group of German researchers (Ludwig Maximilian University) carried out an experiment that led to the achievement of temperatures below absolute zero, thanks to a system with energy but with very low entropy.
Absolute zero is the temperature at which all the molecular mobility stops, understood as the energy state. It is a theoretical value can not be reached in practice. At least until today.
In addition to the amount of energy must consider the entropy, which describes in a sense, the "amount of chaos" in a system, for example the different states in which the atoms or molecules can be found in a given time, and all the possible combinations. With the shortening of the temperature (energy) it also reduces the entropy and vice versa; absolute zero also corresponds to the minimum entropy.
We can think of "a set of balls that move in a pinball: every possible combination of speed and direction of each bead is a state. More hit the balls with the blades of the flipper (ie, more energy I enter in the system) and more are the possible states, thereby increasing the energy of the system entropy increases. "
Two are the variables with we have to do and which set the temperature: amount of energy and entropy. There is a lower limit, absolute zero, but not a higher one. At least until today and until quantum mechanics comes into play, because if the entropy is close to zero but increases the amount of energy we can speak of negative absolute temperatures.
Adding more and more energy atoms reach the state maximum, and in fact the entropy tents and decrease. This is a concept known in physics.
In practice, it creates a lattice of potassium atoms "held together" by a combination of laser and magnetic fields.
The system thus created is shown to be stable for a few hundred milliseconds, sufficient to study states of matter or almost unknown. And also to hypothesize and verify new and unusual methods to transfer energy: a system with negative temperature in contact with a "normal" should in theory generate a flow of energy that creates "Carnot engine with efficiency greater than one." The researchers also suggest that this system could be used to model the so-called "dark energy", and recreate the same model that generated the expansion of the Universe.

This experiment also shows that Italian politicians are right when they say that anything is possible

Galileo's infamous epicycles and equants was an occams razor but he did get F=mg correct thanks to Newton.

Milk from cows (no minded factory), silk from silkworm (no handed tailor), and honey from bee (a poisonous insect)... Who cares a person who's saying there's no intelligent design :))

I believe one day when science has advanced enough, it will come to the same conclusion ;)