The Essentials: Let’s Do This Thing

The topic of science can invoke fear in the hearts of the young and old because it has a reputation for being hard to understand, boring or both.  Evolution can raise trepidation and dread in the hearts of many, especially some Christians because it has a reputation for being a threat to God and the Bible and is perceived to question our relationship with both. This alarm has many sources and one is a misunderstanding of what evolution is and what the theory claims to be.

Many have been tempted to say that evolution is “just a theory” and therefore something that can be easily dismissed.  At best saying evolution is “just a theory” reveals that the person making the claim simply doesn’t understand what a scientific theory is or at worst shows that the person is being sneaky to advance their point of view. 

It is easy to see why there is some confusion about the term theory.  Often when someone says they have a theory they don’t have a lot of evidence to back it up. For example we were having problems with a wireless device at work. Someone had a theory that the sensors for the automatic lights were interfering with the wireless signal.  This was a pretty good explanation so we created a little test to see if the theory was true. 

To test the theory we covered up the light sensors then tried out the wireless device.  It turned out that we experienced the same problem with the device even when the light sensors were covered.  The theory was a reasonable explanation but it was also easy to dismiss once we checked it out.  These guesses and checks go on all of the time and are actually an important part of science but not a theory in a scientific sense.  In science we would call the guess a hypothesis and the check an experiment. 

There are other words that can be understood differently depending on how they are used.  If I said, “I used to be a hockey player” you would probably know what I mean.  If I said, “Wayne Gretzky used to be a hockey player” you would also know what I mean, but you wouldn’t assume that I meant the same thing.  Wayne Gretzky has a 20 year career in the NHL with a mountain of records as evidence for what kind of hockey player he was.  I have a bag of equipment in the rafters of my garage as evidence for what kind of hockey player I was.  A scientific theory is like the Wayne Gretzky of explanations.