I Have a Theory

[philosophy]

Talk about creationism versus evolution on Slashdot and you're bound to get into a gigantic discussion (don't follow that link unless you're prepared to face potentially more than 2000 comments).

But the thing that bugs me about this whole debate (over the phrase "evolution is a theory, not a law" - or "a fact") is that it hinges on the word "theory." And to paraphrase a great American, I wish that scientific ideas could be judged not by the label that's assigned to it, but by the content of its expression.

Scientific American weighed in on this question with their first point in this article.

In this context, scientists use the word "theory" to describe a large, consistent framework of facts, hypotheses, and inferences to describe a class of phenomena in the world. It is not used to express any kind of uncertainty about the validity of the ideas. As a matter of course, all scientific theories must remain open to being disproven, and being replaced with newer, better, more accurate theories. It doesn't matter what you call it.

The so-called "law" of gravity was called "law" for reasons, not least of which was because it was simply in vogue at the time, in scientific circles, to use that word. It's important to note that Newton's "Law" of Gravity was completely superceded, disproven, replaced, eliminated, by Einstein's "Theory" of Relativity (although for terrestrial applications, Newton's law is usually close enough). But there is very little argument that the accuracy of Einstein's "theory" is superior to that of Newton's "law." We continue to use those words, basically, for historical reasons.

For myself, in a limited fashion, and in my own way, I do believe in a God. The nature of that belief is too complex even for myself to understand fully. But I also believe in science as a means to understanding our universe (I do not say "finding truth"). I do not see a conflict here, even between the theory of evolution and God the ultimate creator, mainly because I cannot pretend to understand the means by which God went about creating the universe. How can any human being pretend to know that? So how can one say that it was not evolution?