Once you understand who a scientific theory is derived, unlike what the news media and the non-scientific community uses that word, I bet you would not have any difficulty
Non-science uses 'theory' when they are guessing. Science is a long process before something becomes a scientific theory. Best to ask Astrodon next time he posts.
ID is not a theory but a new idea for creation which is also not a theory. It cannot be falisfied, for one.
It's been a while since I had the time to read AH in detail, thanks for the honorable mention mtrycrafts! I can't believe this thread is back. The scientific method has some variation among the different natural sciences, but almost all of them have the same 3 steps in this method:
1. A
hypothesis is developed from every day experiences or from an instant of insight.
2. The hypothesis is
tested via repeated experiment and/or observation (by various/many/different scientists or groups of scientists).
3. If the hypothesis is confirmed from the experiments and/or observations, it becomes a
theory.
Step 2 is essential what one means by "stating a fact." As has been stated by some here, many think that
theory plays the role of
hypothesis in science, i.e., we're just guessing or assuming.
Theory is not a dirty word! In science, the word theory does not mean one has no proof (as this word is commonly used). Indeed, in order for a hypothesis to be accepted as a theory, one must present experimental and/or observational verification (i.e., "facts"). Finally, in physics and astronomy, the word
law has the same meaning as the word
theory. Whereas "theory" is a statement of words, "law" is the mathematical representation of the theory (e.g., the Newtonian Theory of Gravity states: "Every particle in the Universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distances between them," whereas Newton's Law of Gravity is "F_g = G m1 m2/r^2," where F_g is the force due to gravity, m1 and m2 are the masses of objects, r is the distance between the masses, and G is the constant of universal gravitation which is the proportionality constant between the force and the dependent parameters.
Also as stated by some, science is a self-correcting enterprise. New theories may be realized in time, but if an old theory works well, then the new theory should reduce to the old theory under the limits were the old theory was verified. Examples of this are Special Relativity rewriting Newton's Laws of Motion (but reduces down to Newton's Laws when the speed of an object is much less than the speed of light), and General Relativity rewriting Newtonian Gravity (but reduces down to Newton's Law when an object is in a weak gravitational field).
One final comment, when I talk to my biology professor colleagues, I have heard them state on many occasions that biology makes no sense without evolution by natural selection. On the microbial level, we have seen natural selection take place over the last 100 years ("superbugs" which evolved from the use of antibiotics). For larger organisms, it just takes a lot longer for evolutionary changes to be noticed.