Does "theory" in science mean something special?

Question

Like:
theory of evolution by natural selection
gravitational theory
atomic theory

these are just ideas right? God wouldn't allow evolution for real would he?? doesn't he have a plan for me?

Answer 1

Theory is a set of facts put together with all the necessary proofs. An idea is the thought without proof. When proper proof is incorporated and the set of facts can be replicated for many times, it becomes theory.

Answer 2

Yes, "theory" does have a meaning in science
different from its meaning in ordinary speech. When a person, speaking non-scientifically, says
he has a theory about something it simply means
he has a guess or speculation about it, "just an
idea", as you might say. In scientific terms such
a guess is called a hypothesis, it is something to
be tested and evaluated, and may turn out to be
wrong. In fact, probably most hypotheses turn
out to be wrong, at least in their initial form.

When a hypothesis has been tested many times
and has always passed the tests, that is turned
out to agree with everything else we know on the
subject, and to fit all the known facts, it is raised
to the level of a theory. Scientifically a theory is
a statement that, so far as we can tell, is an
accurate description of reality and can be accepted as true until something comes along to
refute it. With many theories, such as the atomic
theory, the probability that something will someday
refute it is so tiny it isn't worth thinking about.

As for God allowing or not allowing evolution, I
wouldn't presume to guess what he might have
in mind, assuming that he/she/it even exists in
the first place, which seems quite doubtful to me.

Answer 3

There are alot of things that we can not directly observe or proove, such as the makeup of an atom. We can not "see" atoms at thier fundamental levels. There is no microscope strong enough to look at an electron for instance... We can , however, perform experiments and based on the results of those experiments we can form a theory about how we think that an atom looks. For instance we can shoot many tiny particles at an atom and see what happens and how they are reflected away or not reflected at all. The more experiments we can perform, the more accurate our "guess" will be about what an atom is.
To say that they are just ideas is not accurate. They are ideas that have been tested many times by many different people and so far seem to be correct.