Nice to meet you. :D I'm a 'he' too - it's too bad English doesn't have better gender-neutral pronouns...:p
Hello again Asdf, thanks for your reply.
I understand your perspective, disciple - I believed the same way for many years. I still (in my better days) consider myself a Christian, thus I "believe the Bible is God's word". I understand that some things must be taken by faith - but faith is belief
without evidence, not belief
contrary to evidence.
Hebrews chap 11 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. We cannot summon up faith in God on our own, it is God who gives each man a measure of faith.
Given the overwhelming evidence and cohesiveness of the Theory of Evolution across multiple scientific disciplines, I regard it as pretty safe to side with scientific consensus in accepting the
fact of evolution.
I think considering the many fullfilled prophcies and archeological and historical data you would have to say the Bible is pretty darn cohesive too.
The only thing I consider ignörant (nice use of the umlaut :p) about your comment was when you said "it is still just a theory" - because that shows a lack of knowledge of what a Theory is, in scientific usage. Like TRiG, I was surprised in your initial comment that you followed up saying "just a theory" with a scientific definition of Theory.
Credit for the umlaut goes to Trig, I cut and paste the words. I must be ignörant as my use of the definitions was an attempt at sarcasim. ;)
I think probably the confusion comes with the difference between Theory as used in philosophical terms vs. scientific terms. Wikipedia has a good overview (from the
Scientific theory article):
In the sciences generally, a scientific theory (the same as an empirical theory) comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about such observations, and is put forth as a principle or body of principles for explaining a cl*** of phenomena.
A scientific theory can be considered a deductive theory, in that its content could be expressed in some formal system of logic in which its elementary rules are taken as axioms. In a deductive theory, any sentence which is a logical consequence of one or more of the axioms is also a sentence of that theory.
In the humanities we find theories whose subject matter does not (only) concern empirical data, but rather ideas. Such theories are in the realm of philosophical theories as contrasted with scientific theories. A philosophical theory is not necessarily scientifically testable through experiment.
(...)
Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time states, "A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large cl*** of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations." He goes on to state, "Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory."
In other words, a scientific theory cannot be proven, but it can easily be
disproved with a single piece of evidence against it. Evolution has not been disproved. Neither has the theory of gravitation, the theory of relativity, etc. They are the best schema for understanding the evidence we have, and the best schema for making predictions for future tests and experimentation.
You also may want to take a look at the Wikipedia article
Evolution as theory and fact.
With regard to the faith question - that evolution is "a theory used by man in the hopes of explaining away God", or that "Jesus spoke about God creating man and woman so apparently for Jesus, that rules out evolution" - I can only tell you how I resolve this apparent conflict. If there is a discrepancy between the Bible (as I understand it) and observable, empirical evidence - I will side with the evidence, and consider that perhaps my understanding of Biblical truth may be flawed. See my signature for what that looks like to me, as a person of faith.