Quote:
Originally Posted by NeonSamurai
No it isn't, you do not properly understand the differences between scientific fact, theory, and hypothesis.
Scientific facts are direct observations of repeatable, reliable, verifiable events. The key thing is directly observable. You cannot directly observe gravity, or evolution, etc. only the effects which we assign gravity, evolution, etc as being responsible for.
Theory and hypothesis try to explain those facts (there are some differences between the two, usually hypothesis is an extension of an established theory).
You cannot directly observe gravity, evolution, or speciation (try reading that paper closer, even they refer to it as hypothesis). They are not scientific fact they are theories which are used to explain observed scientific fact. In all cases what you observe are effects which the theory attempts to explain why they happened.
Maybe this will make it more clear. You have a ball, you drop it, it falls to the ground and stays there. Now what did you observe? Did you see gravity? The only observable fact is the ball fell down from your hand and hit the ground. The theory as to why that happened is called the theory of gravity. Gravity is not a fact, the ball hitting the ground is the fact.
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I see what you are getting at, but first we need to get definitions straight.
A fact is an observation of the empirical world.
A hypothesis is a provisional idea whose merit requires evaluation and thus can be either confirmed or disproved.
A theory is a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.
Evolution is fact in the way that we have observed it's results and a theory in that we have an explanation to how (natural selection) and why (genetic mutation) it takes place, Evolution also makes testable predictions which can be used to falsify it. With gravity it is similar, but our understanding of the how and why is far more limited than our understanding of evolution.