Its Only A Theory….
As you may have seen in the news, Florida education officials have finally added evolution to required curriculum. You may have also seen the news about the last minute change they added, making evolution merely the “theory of evolution” as opposed to fact.
It may have been a last minute change, and maybe people are reminiscing about the Scopes monkey trial (a legal case testing a law forbidding the teaching of theories that denied the story of Divine Creation) or fear that Florida, although showing promise, will never exit the dark ages of pre-evolutionary theory.
Personally, while I believe strongly in evolution and feel there is plenty of evidence to support it, I don’t really mind the word ‘theory’. After all, I think it is accurate. We are taught as scientists that very little in science is fact. Gravity is a fact. Evolution is not.
Even the definiton of theory uses “Darwin’s theory of evolution” as an example.
In science, facts are rare and theories abound. Widely accepted theories include evolution, but that doesn’t mean its not a theory.
So even if Florida is slow to accept the teaching of evolution, they do have their facts correct when they say evolution is only a theory.
Kallen is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Journalism at the University of Oregon and, of course, writing a blog.
Samper said,
February 19, 2008 @ 6:40 pm
Its kinda funny how gravity and evolution are often used in the same argument. alot of people don’t understand how close those two things are. The reason, at least as I understand it, that evolution is sometimes called a theory is that there is no smoking gun. There is no fossil that says EVOLUTION on it. But what we do have is a timeline on the the bones and a logical progression. We can see the pattern or “force” of evolution if you will, but we don’t what forces it foward. As far as I know, there is no evolution glad. The same is true of gravity. Scientits have a very good idea of what gravity does. Its well defined in a number of different ways, but we have no real idea at all about what it is. What causes it. So in that sense, even gravity is still a theory.
Chicago said,
February 19, 2008 @ 11:47 pm
What I find funny is how Christians often get bent out of shape over evolution. The two ideas aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Darwin himself pointed out that his theory only explained how life got from one form to another, not how it started. He wrote that there still had to be a creator in order for life to begin.
On the other hand, Christianity doesn’t rule out evolution, either. The Bible’s creation story is (very simplified) ‘God spoke everything into existence in six days. On the seventh day he rested’. Some people like to take this literally, which would pretty much rule out evolution. A few important points here:
1) Neither the first humans, nor the Bible’s authors, nor its early readers were biologists. The point of the story is to show God as the creator, not to explain how things were created, which was probably beyond the scope of the author’s understanding anyhow. ‘God spoke’ probably just refers to God being the source of what happened, and could refer to any number of different ways that might have happened.
2) According to the story, humans were created last (day 6). Which only makes sense, since things like land, water, and pizza had to be created first. But it means that people weren’t around the first five days to see what was going on. So everything recorded from those days has to either be made up (which explains the Martians created on day 4), or explained by God in simplified form (which explains… well, most of it seems pretty simplified and lacking an explanation of how things happened). (and no, theres nothing about martians in the Bible)
3) Nobody was around to time this whole process. And the main purpose behind talking about days was to encourage people to set aside one day of the week for rest and rejuvenation. The uneducated early readers of the Bible probably weren’t asking ‘That’s nice and all God, but I don’t really care how I’m supposed to live my life. I want to know how many hours elapsed between the time you created the ocean and the time you created that tasty fishy I had for supper.’
4) Genesis chapter 1 was actually written as a poem. In the original Hebrew, everything flows really nicely (or so I’m told). Alot of that’s lost when translated, but some of it still comes through (Day 1: Day and night; Day 4: Stars, Sun, moon. Day 2: Oceans and the sky; Day 5: Birds and fish. Day 3: Land and plants; Day 6: Animals and people.) Creating areas the first three days, filling those areas the last three days… apparently this was good Hebrew poetry. Theres more, but you get the idea: this wasnt just a story, but a story told through a poem. Which means there may have been some creative license used by the author. And facts and details might have been a little skewed while emphasizing the main point, which was that God created everything. (note: ocean to tasty fishy time = 3 days. Maybe.)
In my opinion, Genesis could be referring to evolution as the mechanism God used for creation. But that’s still a topic of debate. And the typical Christian answer seems to peg the world as being in the tens-of-thousands of years old range, far younger than evolution and the big bang theory seem to suggest.
Interestingly, Darwin created his theory when we went ashore in South America, and found a small creek flowing through a massive canyon. He thought ‘gee, that small creek’s been able to erode away this giant canyon? hmm… small changes over time = big change’ For what its worth, scientists have now determined that Darwin’s canyon was created in a matter of minutes, when a giant earthen dam gave way upstream.
Genesis 1:
http://tinyurl.com/2ld45e