Jazman1985 wrote: The evolutionary theory, the big bang theory, are only theories, meant to interpret the way that people believe things to have happened based upon facts, they are not the facts themselves. So I have not had to reject any scientific evidence, only theories/beliefs/ideas.
Hold on a sec here, this is wrong.
The general public (I do not nessecarily mean you personally) is woefully uneducated as to the meaning of the definition and usage of the term "Scientific Theory". I would agree with you that in common english the term "theory" is merely a personal belief or opinion which is of little account. The usage of the word theory within a scientific context is entirely different however. Within a scientific context, the term theory means something entirely different, and while the two words may look and be spelled the same, they mean entirely different things and should not be confused.
The United States National Academy of Sciences explains the difference this way;
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, [5]
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.[6]
The difficulty (and this is especially true within the Creationist community, which, respectfully, is largely scientfically illiterate) is when people assume that the common usage of the term theory and the use of the technical term scientific theory mean the same thing. They do not.
A scientific theory is a scale model of a known phenomenon (like gravity for example) which models the phenomenon in exacting steps, stringing together measured and observed data into a functioning descriptive replica of the phenomenon. Far from simply modeling the phenomenon, a scientific theory must go further to meet the definition, and actually be falsifiably predictive. That is to say, the functioning model must be so exacting, that it must be able to literally predict future observations which are testable and (if the model is wrong) falsifiable (can be shown to be false through experimentation).
The theory of evolution is no more "just a theory" than the theory of gravity is "just a theory". I'm quite certain you'd see how ridiculous it would be to claim that gravity is "just a theory", but unfortunately because of the lack of understanding of science within creationist communities, many feel entirely justified to dismiss evolution in precisely this way. We get similar "it's only a theory" comments about for example as you did above, the Big Bang. The Big Bang is not "only a theory", but rather a fact. The theory explains how it happened, it models the process.
Wikipedia expands on this idea by demonstrating two examples of how scientific theories went on to model known phenomenon in testable ways.
As an example of the use of assumptions to formulate a theory, consider how Albert Einstein put forth his Special Theory of Relativity. He took two phenomena that had been observed — that the "addition of velocities" is valid (Galilean transformation), and that light did not appear to have an "addition of velocities" (Michelson-Morley experiment). He assumed both observations to be correct, and formulated his theory, based on these assumptions, by simply altering the Galilean transformation to accommodate the lack of addition of velocities with regard to the speed of light. The model created in his theory is, therefore, based on the assumption that light maintains a constant velocity (or more commonly: the speed of light is a constant).
Wikipedia expands on this concept of a scientific theory being a MODEL of reality.
An example of how theories are models can be seen from theories on the planetary system. The Greeks formulated theories, which the astronomer Ptolemy recorded. In Ptolemy's planetary model, the earth was at the center, the planets and the sun made circular orbits around the earth, and the stars were on a sphere outside of the orbits of the planet and the earth. Retrograde motion of the planets was explained by smaller circular orbits of individual planets. This could be illustrated as a model, and could even be built into a literal model. Mathematical calculations could be made that predicted, to a great degree of accuracy, where the planets would be. His model of the planetary system survived for over 1500 years until the time of Copernicus. So one can see that a theory is a "model of reality" that explains certain scientific facts.
Wikipedia continues to expand on the idea of a scientific theory being literally a scale representation, a literal MODEL of reality.
Central to the nature of models, from general models to scale models, is the employment of representation (literally, "re-presentation") to describe particular aspects of a phenomenon or the manner of interaction among a set of phenomena. For instance, a scale model of a house or of a solar system is clearly not an actual house or an actual solar system; the aspects of an actual house or an actual solar system represented in a scale model are, only in certain limited ways, representative of the actual entity. In most ways that matter, the scale model of a house is not a house. Several commentators (e.g., Reese & Overton 1970; Lerner, 1998; Lerner & Teti, 2005, in the context of modeling human behavior) have stated that the important difference between theories and models is that the first is explanatory as well as descriptive, while the second is only descriptive (although still predictive in a more limited sense). General models and theories, according to philosopher Stephen Pepper (1948)—who also distinguishes between theories and models—are predicated on a "root" metaphor that constrains how scientists theorize and model a phenomenon and thus arrive at testable hypotheses.
The idea of testable hypotheses is crucial to the classification of something as a scientific theory as per Popper's ideas of falsification.
An apparently scientific argument is said to be not even wrong if it is based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, or alternatively, theories which cannot possibly be falsified or used to predict anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrongFurther expanding on the idea of falsification, the article explains that if the theory makes no falsifiable predictions it is by definition not a scientific theory
The defining characteristic of a scientific theory is that it makes falsifiable or testable predictions. The relevance and specificity of those predictions determine how potentially useful the theory is. A would-be theory that makes no predictions that can be observed is not a useful theory. Predictions not sufficiently specific to be tested are similarly not useful. In both cases, the term "theory" is inapplicable.
It continues on the theme of a scientific theory as a predictive "Model" of reality which makes falsifiable predictions.
(Scientifici) Theories are mostly constructed to explain, predict, and to master phenomena (e.g., inanimate things, events, or behavior of animals). A scientific theory can be thought of as a model of reality, and its statements as axioms of some axiomatic system. The aim of this construction is to create a formal system for which reality is the only model. The world is an interpretation (or model) of such scientific theories, only insofar as the sciences are true
Note again, a scientific theory is not a guess, or a belief, or an idea, it is a scientific model of the way reality functions.
The defining characteristic of a scientific theory is that it makes falsifiable or testable predictions. The relevance and specificity of those predictions determine how potentially useful the theory is. A would-be theory that makes no predictions that can be observed is not a useful theory. Predictions not sufficiently specific to be tested are similarly not useful. In both cases, the term "theory" is inapplicable.
Let's recap;
A scientific theory is NOT the same as a common usage of the term theory. A scientific theory is a descriptive model, a scale replica of a phenomenon which has predictive powers (if it does not make falsifiable predictions it is not a scientific theory). Falsifiable predictions are a pre-requisite for it being a scientific theory. Said another way, If the scientific theory does not make predictions as a nessecary outcome of the model, which can be experimentally falsified, it is not considered a scientific theory. The more falsifiable predictions a scientific theory makes, and the more facts and observations it can predictively explain, the more successful the scientific theory becomes.
A theory is DIFFERENT from a fact. A theory explains how a known phenomenon works by stringing together many facts into a consistent model. The theory of gravity models how gravity works, it does not "guess" that maybe gravity exists. We know gravity exists, the theory of gravity simply models how it works. Similarly, evolution is an observed fact and the theory of evolution explains how it works.
It should be noted that the Theory of evolution is by far, one of the most successful and oft tested theories in all of science. The only scientific theory more successful is possibly quantum mechanics.
All quotes from --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory
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