July 28th, 2008It’s only a THEORY, after all…
Why is it that only evolution is under attack? There are other scientific theories…..
Part of the problem is that a lot of people didn’t pay attention in their high-school science classes — they never learned what a scientific theory is. Read how Brian Denning explains the concept of a theory from his Skeptoid essays and podcast:
Evolution is just a theory, not a fact. [argues the creationist] This is an easily digestible sound bite intended to show that evolution is just an unproven hypothesis, like any other, and thus should not be taught in schools as if it were fact. Actually, evolution is both a theory and a fact. A fact is something we observe in the world, and a theory is our best explanation for it. Stephen Jay Gould famously addressed this argument by pointing out that the fact of gravity is that things fall, and our theory of gravity began with Isaac Newton and was later replaced by Einstein’s improved theory. The current state of our theory to explain gravity does not affect the fact that things fall. Similarly, Darwin’s original theory of evolution was highly incomplete and had plenty of errors. Today’s theory is still incomplete but it’s a thousand times better than it was in Darwin’s day. But the state of our explanation does not affect the observed fact that species evolve over time.
