Theist theodocies pass logical muster just as well as naturalistic ones do.

Well, technically a theodicy is a defense against the problem of evil, so a 'naturalistic theodicy' really doesn't make much sense. If you mean something along the lines of 'reasons why we exist,' then as OMGF pointed out, theist reasons really beg the question. If you claim the reason we exist is because of God, your begging the question by assuming God exists. Naturalistic reasons (if there are any) do no such thing.

And no, theodicies do not pass logical muster. They are generally all based on begging the question in that they all rely on assuming god is present.

There's our point of difference.

Indeed. We could go on debating this point, and I could give examples why I think no evidence can justify claims about the relative truth of certain theories (say electrons), and you could respond with something along the lines of 'it's absurd to think that there is no such thing as electrons, here we are justified in believing the truth of the theory,' and I could respond that to remain consistent, we should hold to the line that says for any theory we cannot absolutely justify the relative truth status, so no matter how obvious the theory we should not try to ascribe a relative truth status, and so on...

But as you said, that is the point of difference, and I don't think either one of us is going to convince the other. So, I agree, let it be :P

I find the question "How much truth do our current answers have?" only superficially interesting, because it can have no justified answer.

There's our point of difference. I think it can have a justified answer. Not one that is justified beyond all doubt, but a justified answer nevertheless :-)

I find the question "How much truth do our current answers have?" only superficially interesting, because it can have no justified answer. As far as the questions "How much truth do we have?" and "How good is our model?", I consider the second far better because we can justify why we think the model is a good fit or a bad fit. But as concerns the first, we can't justify any answers to it, so then I argue that it is trivial. Sure, if it helps explain science to say this is how the world is, yes, then do that. And sure, it is interesting in an informal sense to think about how much we "know" about what nature is really like. But it should have no place in the nuts and bolts of science. We should stick to the second question.

The point is that the statement 'current answers have some truth to them' doesn't mean much. It's trivial, and should have no bearing on how we think about scientific theories.

See, now, if you say, regarding the above, that physicists should stop saying that the majority of the universe is composed of dark energy because "we don't know for sure", then I have to point out that "we don't know for sure" is just as trivial as "current answers have some truth to them". The interesting question is "How much truth do our current answers have?" And there, I think, we can make meaningful guesses.

If I'm right that we can make meaningful guesses about the degree of truth in our scientific theories, then the question of how much truth we have is of interest to science. Personally, I think that "How much truth do we have?" can be just as important a question as "How good is our model?" The two questions are related, of course, but they tend towards slightly different ways of looking at things, both of which can be useful.

I certainly don't agree with that. It's more than possible to gather a rudimentary understanding of certain scientific principles/phenomena to be able to make educated decisions as to there truth or falsehood. This is not the "faith" that religion asks of it's constituents. They are categorically different.

That's true; the point I was trying to make is that religion often seeks to implant absolutes in young minds, to be accepted as basic premises for any enquiry into related matters. That is, the way in which theists open arguments with "Conclusion: God exists" and twist the evidence around it. Science obviously operates in the reverse of this process. We understand that we don't have the luxury of freely deciding what the truth is and invoking the airy shield of faith to hold it up. Our conclusions will change as our knowledge and understanding of available evidence changes, and will always seek to provide the most likely answer.

Statements like "evolution is true" aren't used in science; evolution is comprised of thousands of sub-theories, any number of which may be improved with time to slightly change the overarching theory of evolution. Strong evidence that invisible aliens are subtly changing allelles with each successive generation may arise tomorrow, in which case much of the theory would be heavily reconsidered. Everything in science must be falsifiable. Just my thoughts.

Too bad, Herb. I am on a quest for truth. I will never get there, and to the extent that I get partway there I'll never know for certain, but the fact that our current answers are imperfect doesn't mean there's no truth in them at all.

Well, of course. Of course evolution by natural selection could be 100% true, or 2% true, or whatever. However, whatever amount of truth some theory has means really nothing for me. The point is that the statement 'current answers have some truth to them' doesn't mean much. It's trivial, and should have no bearing on how we think about scientific theories. I argue that we should only think in terms of how well a theory describes nature, and I'm not willing to commit to much more than that. We can say we are on a quest for truth, and we are, but my arguement is that the goal of science should be that of describing nature, not a search for some 'truth', however you may define that.