Knowledge is power!

[Sithdarth]

The thing is that no matter how much you prove a theory it CANNOT become a law. Laws are collections of evidence. That is all.
Theories are explanatory.

Please do not attempt to explain to me things I know you know that I already know. Its insulting and annoying especially when its completely irrelevant to what I said.

The law of universal gravitation is different from the theory of gravity but they unfortunately have the same name.

No they don't. There is no Newtonian theory of gravity. Such a thing does not exist. Newton is actually quoted as saying something to the effect that any explanation of the source of gravity is up to god. That is to say he approached it from a purely mathematical stand point and left it there. With the caveat that he did say his math worked best if gravity was the same everywhere and instantaneous. Neither of which are explanations just limitations on the mathematics. I have no idea where you are getting this law of gravity except perhaps as a mistranslation.

The gravitation law is the the mathematics behind the attraction but does not explain why this occurs, which the theory does.

Again only the law of gravitation exists. There is no such thing as either the theory or law of gravitation. There is the theory of general relativity which is sometimes called the theory of gravity. However, there is no accepted law or theory from Newton's day that deals with gravity, only gravitation. There certainly isn't two forms of the law of gravitation one dealing with the math and the other theory. Further, once again please avoid explaining things to me that both clearly need no explanation and which I have not brought into question to begin with. (ie. I clearly delineated the exact same relationship between theory and law as you did and yet you felt the need to explain it like I was wrong which is highly annoying)

It is wrong to say a theory is nearly a law.

We'll have to disagree there but probably because I'm using law as having two different meanings which is confusing. When I say a theory is almost a law I mean a theory is almost as metaphysically certain as a law. A condition which I theory can approach asymptotically but never actually reach.

It is also misleading because it muddles the waters between what is a theory and what is a law.

Perhaps but everyone inside the scientific community does it when discussing things with people outside the community because its easier than trying to explain the subtleties of meaning given to the term theory. It serves as a quick and easy way to distinguish a theory that isn't likely to ever change from something more fluid like super-gravity or string theory.

No matter how well proven your theory is, it is still as far from becoming a law as when you started.

Again I was not implying you could change a theory about why into a mathematical law through evidence. Though the two approaches can give equivalent results and as such there are methods to translate from one to the other. I was implying that certain theories have advanced to the point of nearly the same metaphysical certainty as mathematical laws like 1+1 = 2.