08-25-10, 07:50 AM
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#5
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Navy Seal 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Rochester, New York
Posts: 8,633
Downloads: 29
Uploads: 6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Third Man
Did anyone of the Newsweek folks ask if theory is the same as proven fact? Yet to Newsweek theory and truth are one in the same.
I have never heard of Darwin's proven fact.
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I cannot refute this as intelligently so I will just have to quote another source...
From: http://www.evolution.mbdojo.com/theory.html
Quote:
This is such a common complaint about evolution that it deserves a page of it's own. This comment is born out of misuse of the word theory. People who make statements like: "But it's only a theory; it's not a scientific law," or "It's a theory, not a fact," don't really know the meanings of the words their using.
Theory does not mean guess, or hunch, or hypothesis. A theory does not change into a scientific law with the accumulation of new or better evidence. A theory will always be a theory, a law will always be a law. A theory will never become a law, and a law never was a theory.
The following definitions, based on information from the National Academy of Sciences, should help anyone understand why evolution is not "just a theory."
A scientific law is a description of an observed phenomenon. Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion are a good example. Those laws describe the motions of planets. But they do not explain why they are that way. If all scientists ever did was to formulate scientific laws, then the universe would be very well-described, but still unexplained and very mysterious.
A theory is a scientific explanation of an observed phenomenon. Unlike laws, theories actually explain why things are the way they are. Theories are what science is for. If, then, a theory is a scientific explanation of a natural phenomena, ask yourself this: "What part of that definition excludes a theory from being a fact?" The answer is nothing! There is no reason a theory cannot be an actual fact as well.
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