Creationists assert evolution is "just a theory", with the intent of emphasizing evolution's unproven nature, or characterizing it as a matter of opinion rather than of fact or evidence. I think they are misunderstanding of the meaning of theory in a scientific context. In colloquial speech, a theory is conjecture. In science a theory is an explanation or model that makes calculable predictions. When evolution is used to describe a theory, it refers to an explanation for the diversity of species and their ancestry. As with any scientific theory, the modern synthesis is continually debated, tested, and refined by scientists. Creationists also state that evolution is not a fact. In science, a fact is a verified empirical observation; in colloquial contexts, however, a fact can simply refer to anything for which there is overwhelming evidence. I would have to say based on what overwhelming scientific evidence there is supporting evolution; "proven" or not, it's still more credible than what creationism or even theistic evolutionism bring to the table.
There is nothing necessary about a competition between science and faith. This is even true of science and christianity. I would say that science and religious thought have had similar goals throughout their respective histories: explanatory power. Both 'systems' have as a central motif the picture of men trying to understand and explain the world in which they live, even the universal state in which they exist. Science in really the new boy on the block, relatively speaking, and the tenets of science as they have developed do promote certain challenges to the orthodoxies of religious thought which pertained prior to the meteoric ascendance of the scientific method and, perhaps more importantly, its findings. If on considers practices such as alchemy both an attempt to get closer to god (maybe even an attempt to take on god-like stature) and an attempt understand and manipulate the world qua the world, then one can see that science as a set of practices and goals might rise from the same bed as certain religious feelings while also presenting a challenge for other religious positions. Religion and science have tried to present pictures of reality and both sometimes fail. Nonetheless, science has steadily encroached on many of the hallowed narratives of religious thought and this has been true regardless of which religion in is question. This has been primarily because religion as a method values the outcome more than it values the method. In other words, science has no over-riding stake in the outcome of its method, though men can politicize the process. Religion has a pre-ordained ceiling on its findings. Science can seek to prove there is or is not a god and, if it were proven one way or the other, the method would stand pat regardless. Religion cannot be so neutral. Science is tied to the earth in this way, and it is satisfied to be so shackled. Religion wishes to have control over the earth and heavens, seen and unseen. It is science's relative neutrality that is its strength, and it is the relative lack of neutrality that provides the backbone of religious thought and belief. After all, it is not very useful to be wishy washy about the existence of god and all that such implies. This is particularly true of most christian sects. The competition between science and religion in this country has primarily been between science and the accolytes of Jesus Christ. From the start of this nation those accolytes have tried to explain the world in which they live via reference to the bible and its implications. There was a time that certain pockets of the membership could believe in witches and congresses of the devil on earth without challenge. Illnesses were punishments from an angry god, crop failures the same, victories in battle, etc., etc. But one couldn't really rely on such outcomes. The explanatory power of religion wasn't very strong, as it turned out, though it did in in the absence of something better. Science provides answers that are reliable and it proofs those answers in a convincing way. Relative to religion science has a notable advantage where explaining the mundane is concerned, where plotting out the workings of the world is involved. In the process it has largely abdicated claims on explaining the supernatural. In the process it has established the supernatural and relegated a great deal of traditional religious experiences to that realm. Science has boxed religion out of many of the explanatory arenas that the religious mind used to dominate. The result is not a reduction of religious zeal, but a religious zeal that cannot easily lay claim to non-neutral, non-relativistic explanations of the mundane. The battle between science and christianity in this country is a turf war. Intelligent Design and such are attempts to lay claim to the caches of explanatory power that science has established so that the explanatory power of christian thought and its narratives can be ascendant. The influence and sway of science are what is at stake even more than any particular finding derived of the scientific method (evolution, for instance). This is why the proponents of ID want their ideas discussed in the science room. They are threatened by the prospect of being banished to the soft religion/philosophy/social studies rooms in a world where the 'hard' findings are coming out of the lab. There is too much turf being abdicated to science when the argument from design is trapped in a room with narratives of globes balanced on the back of a turtle and the like. The problem is religion has been banished by its own limitations. God cannot be captured in a bottle. Science has long accepted this. Religion assumes this but, in coveting the explanatory cache of science, some religious thought has tripped backward into the lab with no working hypothesis. They want to prove god only because they want science's cache and, in that realm, proof is necessary. Having barged into the lab so clumsily, they find that their lack of facility with the scientific method requires some response, and that response is an effort to undermine or re-cast the scientific method. That is what is galling and dangerous about the ID movement and its followers. They will throw science under the bus in order to get hold of its turf. Those of us who respect the scientific method say 'back to soft rooms, my friend, this is a hard party.' There are christians in the hard room who have accepted that religion is not a good way to answer many mundane questions and that, more importantly, the way of the religious mind and its explanations aren't necessarily bound to the same territory as science. This is a reduction of the role of religion but it allows religion to maintain predominance over certain lofty areas of perceived reality and possibility. Those people move between the rooms successfully without trying to bastardize the experiences had in either locale. Others have not accepted the truncated, specialized role of religion so well and they do try to drag their process into the hard room while also attempting to stay at that party by attacking the rules of science. Back to the soft room, please, we're busy don't you know.
In reply to: Science cannot save your soul We don't know that. We don't know if we have a soul and furthermore we don't know if souls can be saved nor do we know what it takes to "save" a soul. Well, as a person who does not really believe there is or is not a god, I don't pretend to know what soul is. I don't disagree with that aspect of your statement. However, I trust that christians or muslims or whomever know what would satisfy their earthly understandings of a saved soul. That is their business and, as I understand their definitions of soul and salvation, science is not going to send you to heaven. I only mention this because, given my understanding that the religious mind is seeking closer relations to god (having already assumed that god exists as their religion posits), science cannot help and should therefore be left to its own designs. Allow science to be science and accept its limitations and strengths, which is advisable in re religion, as well. I tend to believe that it is possible we will one day understand systems within the human body that will constitute love, spirit, soul, and any number of currently ineffable human experiences, feelings, sensibilities, etc. We may even corner the functions that produce religious experiences, the sense of deity, etc. Still, the soul that has been talked of for so many centuries is not tied to the body or the earthly realms, and it will slip free of any truly scientific explanation. At leas that is how I see it. Science will not save such a soul from perdition nor deliver it to god's side. We may one day decide to change the human body, its systems, it brain, in ways that banish the sense of god or religion in this or that test figure. That person might have no inkling of deity or the idea might sound wholly absurd to his ears. Those that still produce such feelings will no doubt find the test subject to have been robbed of an essential aspect of their 'natural' humanity. I don't know. Maybe there is a god and maybe he has spoken to us and maybe miracles which contradict all known phenomenon occur. If science is to be used to address these types of possibility it must be allowed to do so without the meddling of those who care little for the process and covet primarily the cultural cache science's explanatory powers provide.
