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New Science Standards Approved in Florida
anonymous_echidna writes "Florida has voted to accept the new K-12 science curriculum standards amidst a storm of controversy around the teaching of evolution, which had up until now been the scientific concept that dare not speak its name. There was a compromise made at the last minute, which was to call evolution a 'scientific theory', rather than a fact. While some lament that the change displays the woeful ignorance of science and scientific terminology, the good news is that the new curriculum emphasizes teaching the meaning of scientific terms and the scientific method in earlier grades."
Still, I think it would be an improvement of orders of magnitude if science classes in general focused more on:
"how did we learn this?" (i.e., the scientific method, how observations have to be done to eliminate bias, the formulation of competing theories, how experiments are designed, how hypotheses were ruled out, etc.)
as opposed to:
"here is he official list of truth that you have to memorize and then do cute IQ-test-like problems with".
The latter gives the wrong impression of what science is and why it matters.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
There have been too many occasions where the news media has persisted in "dumbing down" the terminology that they use. I even remember watching a "Faith and Values" show on CNN last year where John Edwards (the candidate, not the psychic) was asked his thoughts on Evolution which, in the words of Soledad O'brien, was the belief that man evolved from apes.
We need the news media to take the lead in helping people understand what a theory is vs. a hypothesis. How fact and theory are not opposites. The fact that a "law" is not the opposite of a theory. Too many people are getting away with murder in these debates because the termnology isn't clearly understood and the news media doesn't care to straighten it out.
Regards, Ian
That's fair, because evolution IS a scientific theory. So is Gravity. Hopefully they'll also teach the kids what it means to be a theory, and that "theory" doesn't mean "wild-ass-guess".
Username taken, please choose another one.
It is strange how a Christian will say,"Things aren't perfect now after the fall", but then they'll say,"Evolution isn't God's plan." Well how do they know that?
The 6 days of Creation match up with science on the ball when they aren't literal days as we know them, but days of God, which are explained to be any length of time in two different places in the Bible.
I wrote a chapter in my book about it, but I don't see the need to make a long post here. You can check my book on my website if you're so inclined. I updated it last week. Keep in mind that it is a rough draft.
God spoke to me.
Isn't that like an Obama supporter lamenting that Obama was called a Presidential Candidate by the press?
Control the meaning of words, you control how they're percieved. For instance, most if not all the old Soviet republics considered themselves 'democratic' in that elections were held on a regular basis. Of course, there was only one slate of candidates to elect, so calling them 'democracies' was a bit of a misnomer. Likewise, their penchant for putting "People's' in front of just about everything, like 'People's Democratic Republic of'. Double whammy there...
Now, if the definition of 'approved' now means 'guaranteed not to piss off any J Random NeoCon Fundie', and 'theory' now means 'something that cannot be proved but must be taken on faith', we're in serious trouble here...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
"Certainly"? Not certainly. Natural selection is the process by which some animals survive better than others by having certain traits. Horses that run faster are less likely to meet the glue factory before reproduction than slower horses, for example. It's still 'natural selection', it's just that environment has changed.
Cats and dogs go through similar things.
Assuming 'natural selection' is true and not a false hypothesis, this fits the pattern. If it's false, then this may not be the same thing at all after all.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
This is actually a good thing. A good theory stands up to scrutiny. There is not such thing as "ridiculous" challenge. Any challenge which does not deny rules of logic or observed facts has merit. If students are instilled with an extra degree of scepticism, I'd say, "good for them." Dogmatic teaching of scince as facts creates nothing but fudder for pop-culture -- it does not produce thinking minds.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The highest honor SCIENCE can bestow any idea is that of the "Theory". Science cannot claim anything to be a fact because in science, nothing is beyond disproval.
If science starts stating things are fact, and beyond disproval then the idea in question becomes dogma. Dogma is the realm of religion. Science may be your religion, but you do science a great disservice by making it so, at the expense of the scientific schema and method.
I know that the creationist/ID crowd LOVES to rub it in that evolution "is only a theory", but you've got to resist the temptation of fighting back by out-dogma-ing the dogmatists.
Evolution IS only a theory, it's among the most widely studied and tested theories of science. It's the single unifying theory of biology. Everyone say it with me: Evolution IS just a theory. The 800lb Gorrilla, bad-mother-fucker, stomp your colon theory. The king of theories.
In science, that's as good as it gets. And as science-minded people, we should know that.
THL phish sticks
The Roman Catholic church has recognized evolution essentially as fact and completely compatible with the bible. So I don't really understand what the problem is with Protestants in this country.
The only reason I see for this idiotic push to marginalize evolution and push creationism as a valid theory is because Christian conservatives see their influence on American culture slipping. This is a desperate attempt to make their religion relevant. I don't understand how this is permitted.
Evolution is a science. Creationism and Intelligent Design are not science and have no place in the science class. Those concepts don't conform to the standards established by science. There is a place for creationism, and that's the theology class.
If parents want to compromise their children's education they should do so in private schools or at home instead of trying to force this stupidity on everyone.
It's not really a question of religion, if you think about it--it's more a question of politics.
It just happens that the politics involved are largely being used within the framework of religion in order to maintain a certain population within a given power structure, and to resist attempts to overturn said power structure from the outside.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Teaching evolution - does it really matter?
Evolution is the least popular theory ever proposed. It has been under continuous attack ever since it was proposed. During this time, the creationists have tried every trick they can think of to get it out of the schools. They have blamed just about every evil of society on it, and they have brainwashed millions into believing that it's incompatible with their religion. They've tried to make it illegal, and they have even tried (unsuccessfully) to disprove it. And evolution has survived all of these attacks because it is true. You can always argue that the physical evidence doesn't accurately represent reality, and of course the creationists have tried that, but it's no use when they're arguing with proper scientists.
Given this, I don't think we need to worry about evolution at all. Sure, creationists would like it to be thrown away entirely, but as long as we have scientists, that simply will not happen. You just can't do useful research in any physical science if you think the Bible has greater authority than a ton of physical evidence. There are worse problems in public schools than a bunch of nutcases wanting their crazy beliefs taught as if they were science.
There is no evidence that will convince a creationist that he is wrong. If Jesus Christ personally appeared in front of John Q. Creationist and said "Hi, John. My name's Jesus, the Earth is billions of years old and evolution is basically true," then John Q. would probably crucify him for blasphemy. That's what the fundamentalists did, the last time Jesus told them they were wrong. "Everyone" knows that God couldn't have created the Universe using evolution: he's omnipotent, sure, but he's not that omnipotent. In summary, there is no point in trying to argue with these people, their beliefs are nuts even in comparison to other Christians, so let's just ignore them..
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
George Carlin was right...
Anything that starts with some "There's some invisible guy, up in the sky, who can kill you, because he loves you" is deeply, persistently and fundamentally fucked up.
Creationism is merely an expression of how fucked up it is.
ANY country that has ANY religion is just as fucked up.
"Offer your sufferings to Christ" is NOT a health care policy. Got that?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Now I'm going to get myself into trouble.
Because my understanding (as a scientist) has always been that all science was theory - scientific theory and not fact. Some scientific theories, like evolution, have so much evidence that they may as well be fact - but they're still technically not fact.
And like you said gravity is a theory. The fact there is that when I let go of an apple it ends up on the ground, that's the fact - the most sensible theory that explains that fact and other related facts is the theory of gravity. And the theory of evolution is the most sensible theory that explains the fact that there are a wide range of different types of animals and plants on this planet. Creationism and ID are also theories - not scientific theories because they cannot stand up to testing by the scientific method. (And yes FSM is a theory too).
So let baby have his bottle - tell them "Yeah! Evolution is a scientific theory - and a damned good one at that." That'll stump them.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I'll stick to countries where I don't have to worry about whether a religion is "approved" or not.
If religious representatives insist on arguing over science standards, scientists need to barge in on all the other curricula and insist on arguing over the definitions of words in their syllabuses too. Start by telling all the comparative religion classes to teach kids that the bible being the word of god is an unsubstantiated, non-scientific hypothesis.
I have never understood the non-scientific community's obsession with taking *anything* as 'gospel'. By definition science only explains a phenomena until a better explanation comes along. The purpose of science is to continually refine our understanding, not create a doctrine that must be followed.
You should never take any scientific theory at face value. Every true scientific explanation is accompanied by the data that led to that conclusion and thus each individual should be making their own conclusions based on the data. That is the beauty of science, if you don't think something is correct all of the information you need to prove that the wrong conclusion has been reached is there for you to use.
Evolution is NOT a fact. It is a theory.
Gravity itself is also NOT a fact. It is a physical property of matter that we can observe, measure, and of which we cannot deny the existance. The *existance* of gravity may well be deemed a fact, but all our maths that describe gravity are still only theories too. The best minds in the world of physics are still struggling to come up with an explanation that accurately describes what exactly gravity really is, and what causes matter to have it.
The best minds in the world of zoology are also still struggling to come up with explanations of how *exactly* evolution could explain how one species of critter evolved from another. And they're still stumped. Only an uneducated simpleton who blindly believes that mammals somehow evolved from reptiles will buy the theory of evolution without detailed and accurate explanation or proofs.... just like the same kind of simpleton blindly believes that all critters were suddenly willed into existance, like *poof* all at once.
I firmly believe in God the Creator, but am blessed with a smart enough brain to understand that God is very complex, and that his Creation may very well have taken hundreds of millions, or even billions of the time units we call "years" to accomplish, and the exact mechanisms he used to create life and diversify all the species are so very far beyond our minds' capabilities to figure it all out at this point in our existance. Maybe someday we'll know how it all was all put together, but as for today... both the groups who claim that "Evolution is FACT" and "Six-24-hour-days creation is FACT" are both equally as ignorant as the same kind of group who once said "The universe orbits around the Earth and that's a FACT". God and the universe and all about how life came into existence and to be so diverse on this planet is all just a wee bit more sophisticated than we humans can thoroughly and accurately explain at this time. We've got some good clues into some parts of it, but we're still a huge long ways off from really complete understanding it.
http://www.mhall119.com
What this country needs is for some fact and common sense to be injected into this debate. A few things we all need to remember:
Evolution is a theory. I won't go into the scientific definition of theory here; that's covered quite well in this document that was previously talked about on Slashdot. Evolution is not a fact (at least, not according to science) because it is untestable at this time. The mechanics behind evolution--adaptation and natural selection--are testable, and can generally be accepted as fact by all involved. Evolution, like all theories, takes observable, testable facts and presents a model based on those facts for the purpose of explaining observations.
We look at biodiversity, we look at the fossil record, we look at millions upon millions of scientific observations and we see what appear to be patterns. Science looks at those patterns and attempts to explain them. The result is the ever-changing theory of evolution.
What's more, there are two brands of evolution. There's the evolutionary mechanism, that is the process by which speciation can occur between two isolated populations of the same species. Then there's the evolutionary history, which attempts to create an ancestry for life based on fossil records and observations of current species. The former is almost undeniable; there exists little if any scientific data that contradicts our current model of evolutionary mechanics. The latter changes frequently and is perfectly questionable, and should be treated as such.
There should be no conflict with the idea of evolution and religion. There is simply no need for them to be at odds. Now, if one should choose to disbelieve specific evolutionary histories, that's really no big deal...the truth is, there are huge gaps in the fossil records and those "family trees" can never be 100% accurate. They just do the best with the data they have.
So maybe public schools should just skip teaching the lineage of any give creature and stick to the mechanisms that drive evolution and the general concept of it.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Regardless, evolution is still just a theory. It's a good theory based on solid observed evidence, but without being able to see the process in nature, it is difficult to justify calling it scientific fact. On the otherhand, we are able to observe gravity in nature. We have been able to quantify gravity; modeling it and testing those models. We can not quite yet say the same for Evolution.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
The "Theory of Evolution" is not "Evolution."
"Evolution" is a proven fact. Organisms evolve over time. It has been documented, proved, case closed. Again: it is a fact that organisms evolve. Score one for science and zoology.
Now, the more complex question, why do certain evolutionary steps take place? That is subject to theory and speculation, research, anthropology, and study. Did human being evolve from "lesser" primates? Almost certainly, barring some unforeseen UFO landing (8 million years to earth -- Quatermas and the pit) or divine intervention, the fossil record is pretty conclusive.
What is most interesting is the path from lesser primate to our current form, we still do not know everything. For instance, it seems that perhaps the Neanderthals re-joined the genetic pool rather than simply die off.
The problem is that religious fools require absolute certainty in everything but religion. The evolution of human beings is far more proven then genesis, but they "believe" genesis as "gospel." So, evolution and the path between single cell life and 21st century human beings has to be 100% documented with no missing steps or ambiguous lineage or it is just a wild theory and therefor no more valid than what they already believe.
They are, by definition, unreasonable. Unfortunately, "unreason" is the common sense of the day because we "elite" thinkers don't represent "real" America.
We see the theory of gravity in operation, although it too is referred to as a theory. We do not see the tectonic plates move continents across the ocean, although we know it happened. Just because you cannot actually witness firsthand the process of evolution creating new species, it does not give the theory of evolution any less credibility that any other scientific idea. We can observe that evolution has occurred, and quantify the rate at which it occurs. We have models of evolution and have tested those models against the available scientific evidence (hint: it's caused by genetic mutation of DNA at a measurable rate, and the fossil evidence matches our predictions).
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Please refrain from calling every biological scientist in the world a liar. Whether you like it or not, evolution is scientifically speaking a theory.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...then you have to believe that God has been intelligently designing diseases to be more resistant to antibiotics. Maybe to keep the threat of plague on the table?
There may be some question as to whether man evolved from apes (although the evidence is pretty overwhelming), but we can see evolution in other organisms occur literally before our eyes.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
String theory is incomplete.
The biggest problem with this whole "it's just a theory" argument is that the word "theory" is ambiguous. It's just like "free speech" vs. "free beer".
In science "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. A theory is a logical explanation or a testable model for a given natural phenomenon.
In common language, however, theory refers to conjecture or opinion. Thus the confusion.
String theory is the former, but it is incomplete. It has yet to be adopted by the scientific community as a proven theory because there are no accepted methods of testing it. In other words, it is a work in progress. To nitpick about calling string theory a "theory" is like nitpicking about a computer program that isn't finished being coded yet being called a "computer program". No matter which side of the fence you decide to sit on you'll be right. It's not technically a program yet because it's incomplete. But to say that it's not a program raises the question of what to call it.
NOMA sucks! It's pussing out of the issue because you are afraid someone will pull out the "Oh I'm offended" card. F*** 'em. Let 'em be offended. 1/2 the time they're not offended, but hoping to shut people up be pretending to be. It's called lies and manipulation
If you're religion says man was made of dirt that was created with the rest of the universe 6000 years ago by an invisible sky ghost in only 144 hours, then there IS conflict between science and religion.
You are making the big assumption that the "religion" you want to refer to is a very liberal, reformed, and enlightened one that is the very opposite of what their religious books tell them they are.
NOMA sucks!
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Sure you can observe gravity and model it based on observation, but no one know what actually causes gravity or why it exists. There is no proven theory as to what gravity actually is.
However evolution can be observed and modelled. The process of selective genes being inherited from one generation to the next is observed, documented and can to some extent be predicted.
Given the above, I'd say evolution is more completely scientifically known than gravity.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
No one has witnessed Macro-Evolution (changes from one species to another). There is no difference between the two, they are not separate theories or separate observations. It's like saying we can observe that a single photon travels at speed c, but we haven't observed 10 million photons traveling at c, so we don't have to believe it can happen.
Until you prove that the mechanism for "micro-evolution" is different than the mechanism for "macro-evolution", then belief one is belief in both.
http://www.mhall119.com
Please go look up what "theory" means in science.
EVERY description of how things work in science is a theory. This does not mean it is not also a fact. The only things that are called "laws" are only called that for historical reasons; if thermodynamics were developed today it would be called a theory.
Any theory can be disproven at any time by presenting a contradictory, repeatable example. If a contradictory example is given, then the theory can either be modified or replaced. Theories can never by absolutely proven. Supporting evidence can pile up. The most convincing evidence to support theories is if they make predictions which we can then test and find them to be true. However, any theory can be struck down at any time.
The fact that evolution is STILL a valid working theory after over 100 years is testament to its strength. It's been modified a few times but never displaced. After so many years and thousands of challenges, there is still no credible evidence or experiments that disprove it. That means that even if it's not entirely accurate, it's nearly certain that it's pretty damn close to the mark.
It's the best scientific explanation we have right now for the facts that are evident. However, the theory of evolution has itself evolved over the last hundred years. It's not a static thing, and it should continue to be refined as more evidence presents itself. Evolution will never be a scientific fact, at least until we can build time machines that will let us go back to study man in his There are very few facts in science. That gravity pulls objects toward the center of the earth at 32ft/s^2 is a fact. The theory of gravity explains why that happens.
So true. This is a prime example of the difference between how science works and how religion works. Simply put, science = (observation + disprovable theories). If your theory conforms to the observations under certain conditions, you can apply that theory again as long as the conditions are met.
The driving force behind religion is - in my opinion - social pressure. If your parents are christian, you'll be a christian too. Not because it is testable that it is the only true religion, but a) because you are indoctrinated from day one, and b) because your environment won't allow you to think differently. You won't "fit in" anymore. Just think what happens when two people with different religions want to mary. In extremis, even today, young people are killed by their own family because they want to mary somebody with a different belief. Now that's an extreme case, but it clearly shows how strong social pressure can be. The family rather kills it's own than to have to go through the shame. The individual feels the pressure of the family, and the family feels the pressure of the community.
That's why they want to propagate ID by law instead of scientific proof. It's totally in line with how religion works.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
There is no fact behind the Theory of Evolution in relation to the creation of different species. It has been proven that genetic mutations exist, and that they cause illness and deformations, but not that they have the ability to create limbs, wings, lungs, etc. in perfect working order.
One thing that I am constantly amazed about is that people implant their own logic into Evolution; DNA does not have an agenda. It does not wake up one day and say "over the next 100 generations, I'm going to grow wings and fly!". No, it would create a flap that hinders the movement of the arms or legs and the creature would die, due to the "survival of the fittest" logic (see the Theory of Evolution).
Charles Darwin wrote that slight changes can occur which, if beneficial, will continue into the next generation. It is a HUGE leap from this to saying that "We all came from fish". It is not correct to look at fossils and assume that one came from another because they look similar. Without scientific proof (Please, show me how fish can grow lungs to breath only air, without compromising their current breathing system) all you have is a pretty chart.
When you have two positions (science vs. religion), based on diametrically opposed systems of thought (reason vs. faith), reaching contradictory conclusions about the way the universe works (physical processes vs. magic), how can they not be at odds? I keep hearing feel-good platitudes about how science and religion can coexist peacefully, but I don't see how when their spheres of influence overlap and each teaches that the other is completely wrong. If one person tells you that 1+1=2, and another person is telling you that 1+1=9, they are going to be at odds. One of them is wrong. And when there's as much at stake as the reason vs. superstition debate that seems to have taken over American politics, pretending the conflict doesn't exist is foolish.
And leave your 'Science teaches how, and religion teaches why' at home, please. Science is happy to leave moral questions alone, but religion can't seem to keep its fingers out of questions of empirical knowledge. This current debate is proof of that.
or this paper that shows "allopatric speciation by reproductive isolation in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations" [Dodd, D.M.B. (1989) "Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila pseudoobscura." Evolution 43:1308-1311.]
or a similar paper using other fruit flys [Kirkpatrick, M. and V. Ravigné (2002) "Speciation by Natural and Sexual Selection: Models and Experiments" The American Naturalist 159:S22-S35 DOI]
or any of the genetic evidence for speciation?
Erm, except there are fish that have both gills and lungs. Lungs are a gas permeable extension of the gut that developed independantly of gills. In some cases, the animals found the shallows to be preferable and those with superior gas transfer developed lungs. In those animals that didn't, the organ developed into the gas bladder, allowing them to absorb gas into and excrete gas from the blood stream to control density.
Pick a harder one, like why the human retina is such a lousy design and that of the octopus is so much better.
Actually, there are more (and bigger) problems with our current understanding of gravity than with evolution. General relativity is our "theory of gravity" that you speak of -- but it's incomplete. Quantum mechanics has been shown time and again to be correct, but general relativity and QM are fundamentally incompatible without changes to one or both. There are real scientific problems with the theory of gravity; on the other hand, the only challenges to evolution are, by definition, unscientific. If you're willing to call the theory of gravity "fact," then it would be intellectually dishonest to relegate evolution to some other, "fuzzier," area of knowledge.
That's what's so silly about these debates; it's as if the people setting the standards haven't the slightest idea what it is scientists have been doing since the end of the Dark Ages. How many of them boast college degrees? That's the number of colleges that need to take a serious look at their science requirements.
Legalize it.
Here's the problem. The word "evolution" is being used in two very different senses. The differences of scale do, indeed, make the words very different.
One use is for the small changes within a species over time. The "bird beaks". The deterioration of vision in humans. MRSA. These are all things that genetics easily explains. These are all evolution "facts".
The other sense covers "origin of life". Sludge turned into slime which turned into fish which turned into whatever. That's the "big E" Evolution. And yes, I know, I'm oversimplifying it alot. These are all the "could be's". These are all the ones where nobody was there to actually see it happen, so it's a theory that it is how it DID happen.
Two very different senses: these things were observed vs. these things we think happened. These observed facts vs. a theory about how unobserved results were obtained.
It is almost inevitable that whenever someone who argues for the latter, Big-E Evolution meets someone who doesn't believe in the Big-E version, the believer switches to talking about the little-E version and insults the non-believer for ignoring the "facts" of little-e evolution.
Yes, MRSA "evolved". That's a fact. A genetic mutation in non-MRSA resulted in a strain that was resistant. Simple genetics, and we can duplicate it in the lab as well as observe it in nature. Little-E evolution occurs.
BUT, little-E evolution does not prove Big-E Evolution. "This can happen" is not proof that "this did happen".
That's why "the theory of evolution" refers to Big-E evolution and is quite accurate in claiming that it is, indeed, only a theory. Science will not ever be able to convert Big-E evolution into a fact, since there is no method of proving how something DID happen, only ways to show how it COULD HAVE happened.
Maybe Big-E evolution did happen. Maybe the world was created to look as if it did. You cannot differentiate between the two, and little-E evolution does nothing to prove or disprove either.
We can observe that evolution has occurred, and quantify the rate at which it occurs. We have models of evolution and have tested those models against the available scientific evidence (hint: it's caused by genetic mutation of DNA at a measurable rate, and the fossil evidence matches our predictions).
There is plenty of non fossil data. Most obviously from domestic animal/plant breeding and parasites becoming resistant to drugs.
Possibly the issue here is that there are people who dislike the idea of human activities being "natural selection" as much as a change in ecosystem created by soil erosion.
Actually no I hadn't. You are the first person to present me with actual examples of reproductively isolated speciation. I retract my previous statements about having no observed examples of one species evolving into another.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
The naysayers say that the non-fossil data is micro-evolution, and that we have no evidence for macro-evolution, the creation and divergence of new species. That makes as much sense as saying that you believe the continents move several inches per year, but that we don't know that the continents have really moved thousands of miles. By the magic of multiplication, we can tell that several inches per year over the course of many millions of years means that they have indeed moved thousands of miles. Similarly, the genetic mutation rate we can directly observe multiplied by the many millions of years since the divergence of species gives us the genetic difference we observe between species. Evolution is the best theory we have so far that explains the genetic and fossil evidence. Of course, that doesn't mean it's absolutely correct, just the best scientific explanation we have so far. As far as I am aware, there is no serious competing scientific theory. The intelligent design folks have yet to have a scientific paper published the last I checked.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Science will never convert evolution (whether you use a big e or a little e) into a fact, because in science all explanations and generalizations are theories. Facts are observations, like "All known differences between the DNA of different vertebrate species are of the type created by mutation." Any interpretation, e.g. "These facts argue that all known species arose by common descent" is theory.
"I dropped a book and it fell to the ground" is a fact.
"All masses are subject to a gravitational attractive force" is a theory.
Yes, there is a law of gravity, and it is WRONG.
It's not wrong, it's incomplete in extreme situations. To simplify for people like you, it means it works but has to be refined in certain conditions, ie. on the scale of very small, very large and very fast. Go read a book already.
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
.........anymore than Newton is the last word on gravity.........
Well I have news for you. Newton STILL is the last word on gravity for our our frame of existence. Now if you can get near the speed of light, then some of the additional effects that Einstein theorized may come into effect. Nobody has been able to test that part of Einstein's theory yet. So for now, Newton's apple still falls as he said it does.
(......fish and humans have a common ancestor..........)
All we can say from what we observe TODAY is that all fish ancestors are always only fish. All humans come only from humans also. Nobody has ever seen anything else. We can observe what happens today, but we can only guess and conjecture about what happened in the past. Observation and experiment is science. Conjecture and guesswork is philosophy and/or religion.
All theory is gray
Wow, is the bus better than a motorcycle? How about designing an experiment and using your theory to predict the result? We do it in physics and chemistry and all the real sciences?
I am still amazed that there are a group that is so feveret to remove god or any superiors being from our existence that they would believe that we all got here by mere chance. But these same people refused to believe that the Nazca Plains and pyramids were created by natural weather and erosion. Look at pyramids, they exist in various forms in multiple locations on earth, and we have found them in area without any current civilization around them.
If we are here purely by chance then it's unlikely that we are the only civilization or even the first to have archived our current technology level. We are almost at the point were we could send out huge colony ships to search for other worlds and explore and/or colonize them. Prove to me that we aren't really the result of an alien expedition that brought life to this planet millions of years ago and at some point suffered a calamity which caused them to lose all their technology and revert to the prehistoric cave men status. Why couldn't be even be the result of a penal colony, descendants of men and women who were sent to this world millions of years ago? Can you even convince me that where is no superior beings in the universe that could have manipulated our ancestors?
.....Over millions of generations.......
Viruses certainly and bacteria go though millions of generation is a reasonable amount of time. Experiments with these have NEVER, even once made a different kind of virus or bacteria through huge numbers of generations.
If your premise were correct, at some point we should have seen by now at least one "arbitrarily large" change from say an HIV virus to some other type, such as maybe ebola or any of the other known or even unknown viruses. Viruses and bacteria, as all life forms, can evolve to cope with environmental stresses, but so far have been demonstrated to remain essentially as they are, even though innumerable generations.
My alternate theory is that all life forms were created by God similarly to the fact that all automobiles, airplanes, bicycles, horse drawn buggies and other transportation machinery were invented by people. Motorcycles don't evolve into automobiles and apes don't evolve into humans.
We can and do how learn these life forms work and put them to use for our benefit. However, figuring out how all life got here is not provable scientifically. I think that scientists have enough to do, trying to figure out how things work today, without conjecturing how it all came to be, since that is merely belief, not science.
All theory is gray