Second, they misuse a popular philosophy of science to argue that they are behaving scientifically in attacking evolution. Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world s data.
Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.
Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein s theory of gravitation replaced Newton s, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.