re: #26 theotherwaldo

Sorry.
I’m skeptical about both creationism and evolution. As far as I’m concerned, both are religions and neither should be presented as factual in a classroom.

There are no facts in science, only currently held theories. Almost every “fact” presented by the believers of evolution has valid contradictory evidence. If a fact has contradictory evidence then it is not actually a fact.

This shouldn’t be a two-sided argument over whether evolution or creationism is correct. Rather, it should be whether either should be taught in the classroom.

Umm, ALL the empirical evidence collected over the past 150 years supports evolution, and NONE of the empirical evidence contradicts it. And there is NOT A SINGLE SHRED of empirical evidence that supports creationism, and mountains of it that contradict Genesis Literlist creationism. I TRIPLE DOG DARE you to present one example of credible counterfactual empiricl evidence falsifying evolutionary theory, or one example of credible evidence supporting creationism.

They are not two competing theories; evolution is empirical science, while creationism is religious dogma, and as such does not belong in public high school science class. The bright line dividing empirical science from religious dogma is the presence vs. the absence of empirical evidence; evolution has tsunamis of it; creationism lacks a single drop.

As to the hoary old ‘just a theory’ canard, the word ‘theory’ in science means something much stronger than the guess or hunch it connotes in common parlance:

en.wikipedia.org

According to the United States National Academy of Sciences,

“Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.”

“A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not “guesses” but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than “just a theory.” It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.”