A slight difference...

In science, a theory is a comprehensive explanation of observed phenomena which manages to cover all bases.  Its value can be seen when the scientific theory is used to predict events--the arrival of a comet, the shape of a hummingbird bill as derived from the shape of the flower it feeds upon, the existence of subatomic particles which explain the behavior of atoms--and are subsequently discovered.

A hypothesis is not a theory.  A scientific theory does not mean that someone has an opinion about something; it is a set of FACTS.  A hypothesis is a tentative explanation of observed phenomena that cannot attain the status of theory until the scientific method has provided enough evidence to support the explanation.  Only then does it become a theory, a term indicating its validity in the face of testing.

This means, of course, that the theory of evolution is not someone's opinion.  It is a set of facts.  The difference between science and other types of thinking is that science never claims to have discovered the ultimate truth, since as science itself advances in its ability to observe phenomena, new events may come to be known.  It is precisely science's astonishing ability to observe more and more of the cosmos that is so exciting and ground-breaking.

Nothing so far, however, has been able to undermine the facts on evolution.  Quite the contrary, it has been enlarged by many thinkers who add a swirl here, a squiggle there, to enrich it hugely.

So when someone tells you that evolution is "only" a theory, that person really means that it is just someone's opinion.  The person does not understand what a scientific theory is and cannot distinguish it from a hypothesis.  Most of these people, however, are uninterested in the difference, since their agenda is usually religious, where they want you to accept a given truth and stop thinking.

It would be well to note that Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, was a religious man, as were many others before and after him.  The difference, however, is that their God was impressive enough to work with atoms, subatomic particles, calculus, gravity, the Big Bang, eons of time, DNA, the primeval ooze, and the evolution of life.  Newton didn't go around scared silly of finding out that orbits are elliptical and Darwin wasn't appalled into silence at the idea that all life crawled out of some mudflat (a fact that DNA has amply proven).  Their God was not one of these prissy little man-made, small-brained creations that don't want you to think.

Their God was magnificent, flinging the universe down as a challenge, defying humankind to discover its fathomless secrets bit by bit, century by century, one atom at a time.  Now that was a God not made in man's image.

IDIOCY SQUARED

Sometimes people do stupid things, even really smart people.  But Texas seems to have a degree of inspired stupidity that simply takes the breath away.

    The bunch of I’ve-got-a-steel-rod-up-my-ass defenders of freedom and hatred who set up some kind of cartoon roast of Mohammad in Garland, Texas, probably—no, surely—haven’t read the Quran and are clueless as to the actual teachings of Mohammad.  They are simply setting up an anti-Islam demonstration of freedom of speech and world-class, slack-jawed, drooling idiocy.  They are unable to distinguish between Arab culture and Islam, one of which (the former) causes lots of trouble for anyone and everyone, and the latter, which is a religion just like the rest of ‘em—you can read anything you want to in so-called holy scriptures not matter what the brand.

    Most of the United States is quite conservative by world standards, but Texas is so far to the right it may fall off the edge of the world at any moment.  They can do this because they are still back there in the flat-earth crew; many of Texas’ churches preach that man and dinosaur lived at the same time and that humankind has been just like it is now, having sprung fully developed from the forehead of…no, wait, that is mythology.

    As someone in San Francisco said to me when he heard about people living alongside dinosaurs back in the day, “Hell, we must have been a lot faster than we are now.”

     It is ironic that these groups are proof positive that evolution is a sound scientific theory, because looking at them, you can see that some of us didn’t quite make it.  No chimp or gorilla would do anything even remotely as stupid as setting out to insult someone they know nothing about and writings which they haven’t read.  There is always the exciting prospect that Texans are the missing link, but, to toss a wet blanket over that notion, it is more probable that they are the link between some primitive ancestor and the big primates of today, except for humankind.  Some have even put forth the theory that these groups prove that you can, in essence, devolve instead of evolve.  This is a scary idea indeed, and considering the numbers of people who reject anything scientific, it could be that the U.S. is upon a terrible path backward.

    Except Austin.  Austin rocks.  Austin calls itself weird, but Austin doesn’t know what weird is.  Austin thinks that if you have big music festivals, fantastic restaurants, aging hippies and young hippies, and lots of very smart people, it makes you weird.  Not really.  It just makes you fun.  Weird in Texas, maybe…

     One of these days Austin is going to have to secede from Texas, kick out the Lege, and set itself up as a republic.  The new capital of the former Texas, soon to be known as “Duhland”, could be Garland.  It has a certain ring to it…Garland, Duhland…and the state animal could be the velociraptor.  The pterodactyl probably won’t be the  Duhland state “bird” because it’s possible no one can spell it.