Where do people get "just a theory" from?

Question

I have heard people say that Evolution is "just a theory" and that they need something to be "more than a theory" in order for them to believe it. In order for something to reach the level of "theory" it must have gone through much scientific debate and scrutiny in order for it to still be called a theory.

The theory of gravity is "just a theory" too. It is rather unfortunate that people who believe solely in creationism and that evolution (the when and how) cannot coexist with creationism (the who and the why) do not understand what the term "theory" means and why saying that something is a theory is a powerful statement about its validity.

Answer 1

It's probably a combination of emotional rejection and misunderstanding of the word theory. In society people often use the word theory like, "Well that is one theory of how I lost my wallet." Evolution isn't just a theory, it is a scientific theory. That changes everything. So part emotional rejection and part misunderstanding of the difference between theory and scientific theory.

Answer 2

The nature of science is such that everything is just a theory until it is proven wrong. You cannot prove anything, you can only supply evidence in favor or against your theory. Einstein's theory of relativity is widely accepted as fact, even though it fails to fully explain the universe. Quantum mechanics also provide a very neat picture of our universe but the theory fails to explain gravity. No theory will ever perfectly describe our world. Only God would even be able to conceive of such a theory. All we can do is settle on the theory most accurately fits the available evidence.

You could just as easily say that God is 'just a theory'. Until it is proven wrong however you have to accept the theory of God or not based on the evidence. You can never prove it right in an objective manner. You can of course prove it to yourself subjectively, but that doesn't make it right for anyone but you.

I agree with you that the theories of creation and evolution are not mutually exclusive. In fact I think they compliment each other quite nicely when taken together as an overall view of how the world became the way it is. Who says God didn't create the universe by using a Big Bang?

Anyway, good question.

With love,
Shane K.

Answer 3

True, both gravity and evolution are "just theories". But they're the answers that make the most sense to me. They're called "theories" because no one completely understands how they work, just that they exist.

Virtually every scientist acknowledges that gravity exists, but none of my physics professors conceded a definitive, contiguous explanation about HOW the atomic attraction between two masses results in an observable force that we attribute to gravitational acceleration.

Similarly with evolution. The knowledge that we have regarding evolution doesn't explain everything (nor does what we know about gravity), but it's better than anything else that anyone's come up with.

Both are "theories" in that they can be updated and adjusted and re-submitted with new evidence. Not so with creationism, which is pretty much set in parchment; that's why it's not a "theory".

Answer 4

Yes this is known as the "It's Just a Theory Hypothesis". The It's Just a Theory Hypothesis assumes that something is wrong or requires as much faith to believe in as a sky fairy because it is just a theory. Of course a little more research has completely debunked this hypothesis. Which is why it's now being replaced with the "Teach the Controversy Hypothesis"

This assumes that there is a controversy even if there is none. This hypothesis never really stood a chance which is why it is on its way out.

Answer 5

It comes from the same place as other popular notions of clinical terms, like "neurotic", "paranoid", "quantum leap", and "light year". A technical term escapes the lab into the wild, and suddenly everyone mistakenly thinks he knows what it means. When a lay person says "theory", he usually means "hypothesis", or more correctly, "wild guess". But "hypothesis" is too hard to say, so "theory" it is. (It still sounds a little tentative anyway.)

True science starts and stays with scepticism, never taking an idea as the final answer unless all other explanations are disposed of. Faith works the opposite way, starting with an assertion and seeking evidence to support it. Faith has no "theories", so they attach "just a" to the word for use as a weapon against those who insist on evidence.

Answer 6

Okay, let's start with the basics. To your average person, a "theory" is little more than a guess. To a scientist, a theory is a model of reality, an attempt to explain a certain set of observations, i.e., facts. No true scientific theory ever "becomes" a fact; it becomes either a proven theory or a disproven, or unproven, theory.

When Darwin proposed his Theory of Evolution, he was not suggesting THAT evolution occurred. He knew it occurred, an observation that many other scientists had made at the time. Darwin wasn't even the first to notice this fact. What Darwin's theory was intended to address, as all scientific theories are, was the "how" or the "why" of evolution. Thus his theory proposed that evolution, particularly the differentiation of species, occurred through what he called "natural selection."

Similarly, when Newton proposed his Theory of Gravity, he wasn't suggesting that things fall to the ground when you drop them. Everybody already knew that. It is an observation, a fact. What Newton was doing was trying to explain, to theorize, why things fall down. Thus he proprosed that there was an attractive force between all bodies, a force which he called "gravity," that produced the effect we have all seen.

This is where Newton had the advantage over Darwin. Any child can see that when he drops his ball it falls to the floor. There was no dispute that "gravity" occurred. Evolution, however, often requires much greater expertise to discern. No one can actually see natural selection occur because it takes a long, long time, and may not even be readily apparent unless you look at things on a microscopic or genetic level.

Virtually every scientific advance we have made in the past several hundred years has been based on proven scientific theories. We've sent men to the Moon based on the Theory of Gravity and Theory of Relativity. We create medicines and vaccines based on the Germ Theory of Disease (yes, the idea that germs cause disease, at least some of it, is a theory, in the scientific sense, i.e., a model). We build computers based, in part, on Quantum Theory. And the Theory of Evolution both enhances, and is supported by, our study of genetics, biochemistry, biogeography, etc., sciences that didn't even exist in Darwin's time.

The Theory of Evolution, just like the Theory of Gravity, of Germs, or Quantum Mechanics, etc., is considered a proven theory. It is not, as someone else here suggested, merely an hypothesis. Whether you accept it or not is up to you, but it has withstood a century and a half of rigorous questioning and experimentation, and has, as I have already noted, gained further support from other, more recent, scientific disciplines.

One answerer here stated that she had "heard of the 'law of gravity' as well as the 'theory of evolution,'" but that she hadn't heard of the "law of evolution." This demonstrates a misunderstanding of "laws" and "theories" as they pertain to science, and I would like to clear this up.

Just as scientific theories never become fact, neither do they become scientific laws. I have already noted that Newton proposed in his Theory of Gravity that the effect we have all seen, i.e., things falling down, is caused by an attractive force that exists between all bodies. The Law of Gravity is derived from this Theory of Gravity (all scientific laws are derived from one or another scientific theory, and may become components of later theories). The Law of Gravity states that any two particles attract each other with a force that is proportional to the size of the particles and inversely proportional to the distance between the two particles. This applies whether there are two particles or millions.

There are in fact laws of evolution, that is laws derived from the Theory of Evolution, at least as we understand it now. Such laws include Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment, and the Hardy-Weinberg Law of gene frequencies.

To whoever reads this, please henceforth do not dismiss the Theory of Evolution, or any other theory, because it is "only" a theory. You may disagree with a theory as you wish, but do so based on its scientific merits, not because it is not a "fact," a comparison which is completely invalid, and against which even the most solid of theories would fail.

Answer 7

They use the derogative "it's just a theory" because they have no clue what a scientific theory is or how one works. They think that theories get promoted to laws. I.e., somehow the theory of gravitation became the law of gravity, even though they came about in the opposite order and Einstein's "theory" subsumes Newton's "laws".

Answer 8

The response of "just a theory" comes from nothing more than sheer ignorance people see theory and they don't have enough education to understand that a scientific theory is not the same thing as the word theory is in every day use.

Answer 9

Agreed.

It is a fact that mutations in the genetics of a species that prove beneficial to the survival of that species get passed down. This is the process we call evolution. People who deny evolution can only use an ambiguous word (theory) to try to disprove it.

Answer 10

People who believe in literal Biblical Creationism do not understand because they do not want to. They probably don't realize that it's based on the work of one man -- Moses -- and he's a known bad source, since we know he exaggerated the extent of the Great Flood and the longevity of people prior to the Flood.