Ask your everyday, average Creationist what he thinks evolution is and the answer will be something along the lines of this:

"Evolution is the theory (not a fact, just a theory) that all the Universe and life came from nothing, evolved for no reason and that there is no God" -simply stunning.

Now, I'm not in any way trying to demean Creationists here, and I'm definitely not trying to belittle their intelligence, but that is not anything remotely similar to what anyone of intelligence calls evolution.

1) You don't what theory actually means. (see the blog below)
2) You're lumping cosmology, Darwinian evolution, abiogenesis, stellar evolution (an unfortunate name, but I will explain it) and the Big Bang into one group.

Evolution has only to do with biological life, ONCE IT GOT STARTED. Nothing more.

3) Darwinian evolution could be reconciled with belief in a God, or to put it another way, you can be a Christian and be an evolutionist too.

So please, read all the blogs on the proper definitions of the terms before making rash comments on a subject you don't fully comprehend.

Oh, and that goes for atheists too!

Here's another thing I would like to set straight right now, the definition of theory.

In everyday life, a theory is just a guess. In fact, the only time I've ever seen it used outside of a scientific context is when someone is taking the piss! On the other hand, in science, a theory is an explanation of the observations. So it's natural that confusion is rife when it comes to this. I will use evolution and gravitation as examples, evolution being the most controversial and misunderstood of the pair.

Evolution is often said to be both theory and fact. This statement, or something similar, is frequently seen in biological literature. The point of this statement is to differentiate the concept of the "fact of evolution", namely the observed changes in populations of organisms over time, with the "theory of evolution", namely the current scientific explanation of how those changes came about.

A "fact" in science is an observation. A "theory" in science is an explanation of the observations, or FACTS.

Scientists use many specialized terms, frequently attributing to common words meanings foreign to the layperson. In particular,

A fact is an observation or a piece of data. Facts can include objective measurements which can be either pieces of verifiable evidence, or the results of an experiment which can be repeated over and over again by different people. For example, there are many observations of gravity and measurements of gravity. Every time an apple is dropped and it falls, an observation of gravity has been made. Gravity is measured every time something is weighed. So gravity can be described by scientists as a fact. This is because there is a collection of gravity observations that need to be explained. Objective observations are facts in scientific language.


Theories in science are different from facts. Scientific theories describe the coherent framework into which observable data fit. There have been many theories that attempt to explain the fact of gravity. That is, scientists ask what is gravity, and what causes it. They develop a model to explain gravity, a theory of gravity. Predictions can be made and tested based on this theory. Many explanations of gravity that qualify as a Theory of Gravity have been proposed over the centuries: Aristotle's, Galileo's, Newton's, and now Einstein's. So gravity is also a theory. In science, current theory is the theory that has no equally acceptable alternate theory, and has not been falsified, that is there have been no observations made which contradict it to this point and, indeed, every observation ever made either supports current theory or at least does not falsify it (see Karl Popper). In no case did gravity disappear when a new theory was created; instead, the explanation for gravity was refined and improved.

Now.....we're just getting started, that was just the example. I mean, everybody accepts gravity, and you won't hear Creationists trying to refute Einsteinian physics, simply because of a misunderstanding concerning some terminology. It is a THEORY and a FACT, just like evolution, as we shall see.


The terms "fact" and "theory" can be applied to evolution, just as they are to gravity. This terminology has been used to dispute the validity of evolution, which results from a misunderstanding of how those terms are applied to evolution.

In the study of biological species, the "facts" include fossils and measurements of these fossils. The location of a fossil is an example of a "fact" (using the scientific meaning of the word "fact"). In species that rapidly reproduce, for example fruit flies, the process of evolutionary change has been observed in the laboratory. The observation of fruit fly populations changing character is also an example of a "fact", using the scientific meaning of the word "fact". So evolution is a "fact", at least using the scientific meaning of the word "fact". These "facts" need an explanation, just like the observatio

In biology, evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population from generation to generation. These traits are the expression of genes that are copied and passed on to offspring during reproduction. Mutations in these genes can produce new or altered traits, resulting in heritable differences (genetic variation) between organisms. New traits can also come from transfer of genes between populations, as in migration, or between species, in horizontal gene transfer. Evolution occurs when these heritable differences become more common or rare in a population, either non-randomly through natural selection or randomly through genetic drift.

Natural selection is a process that causes heritable traits that are helpful for survival and reproduction to become more common, and harmful traits to become more rare. This occurs because organisms with advantageous traits pass on more copies of these heritable traits to the next generation. Over many generations, adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits, and natural selection of those variants best-suited for their environment. In contrast, genetic drift produces random changes in the frequency of traits in a population. Genetic drift arises from the role chance plays in whether a given individual will survive and reproduce.

One definition of a species is a group of organisms that can reproduce with one another and produce fertile offspring. However, when a species is separated into populations that are prevented from interbreeding, mutations, genetic drift, and the selection of novel traits cause the accumulation of differences over generations and the emergence of new species. The similarities between organisms suggest that all known species are descended from a common ancestor (or ancestral gene pool) through this process of gradual divergence.

The theory of evolution by natural selection was proposed roughly simultaneously by both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, and set out in detail in Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. In the 1930s, Darwinian natural selection was combined with Mendelian inheritance to form the modern evolutionary synthesis, in which the connection between the units of evolution (genes) and the mechanism of evolution (natural selection) was made. This powerful explanatory and predictive theory has become the central organizing principle of modern biology, providing a unifying explanation for the diversity of life on Earth.


I hope this definition of evolution helps some people, because recently I have seen quite a few people who are confused as to what evolution actually is. Regarding the subjects of cosmology, the Big Bang and stellar evolution ( a rather unfortunate and confusing name, seeing as it is not related to Darwinian evolution -it is probably derived from the common vernacular usage of the word "evolution") I will be posting more blogs soon.

If you have any questions, or just want to debate I hope this has helped!