The events leading up to the Kansas Board's decision should be familiar by now. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, all that is required for ignorance to prevail is for enough informed citizens to do nothing. Those who accept evolution, need not hear a retelling of the evidence, and those who do not accept evolution will surely not have their minds changed by anything we might say here. More to the point, plate tectonics and astronomy also can not be demonstrated in the laboratory. So folks, here it is again.
Scientific theories can be amazing accomplishments.
As they develop and mature, theories predict and explain widely diverse phenomena, and as they do so the theories themselves become ever more robust and secure. The structure and scope of the theory of evolution is no less impressive. It explains such widely various phenomena as the distribution of fossils in rock strata, the structure and distribution of extant species, comparative anatomy and physiology, the development of embryos, animal husbandry, the declining efficacy of pesticides and antibiotics, and the molecular structure of DNA, RNA, and other constituent chemicals of all life forms. But never mind all that. Though shot through with fallacy and elementary error, this battle-cry remains rhetorically effective.