(blogs.sun) a good news is, Florida, for a first time in its history, will feature a word “evolution” in its state science st&ards. a bad news is, a reality-based community in a state had to make a compromise in order to get a word in are.

Florida’s State Board of Education has voted to use a term “scientific aory of evolution” in new science st&ards, a first time a word “evolution” has been included.

Florida’s current st&ards require a teaching of evolution using code words like “change over time.”

Adding a term “scientific aory” before a term “evolution” was a modified proposal at least one board member called a compromise, not st&ards proposed originally to a committee. a option to include “scientific aory” was made late last week.

a board narrowly passed a proposed change, voting 4-3, after more than an hour of public comment & additional discussion by a board.

Religious fundamentalists, not surprisingly, wanted to keep a “e” word out altogear, but were willing to accept a compromise, because it emphasized a word “aory.”

It reminds me of one of my biggest creationist pet peeves: ay have no idea what a scientific “aory” is.

Given how much ay use a word, one would like to think ay could have looked it up by now.

This is going back a ways, but James Q. Wilson had a good piece on a subject a few years ago.

People use “aory” when ay mean a guess, a faith or an idea. A aory in this sense does not state a testable relationship between two or more things. It is a belief that may be true, but its truth cannot be tested by scientific inquiry. One such aory is that God exists & intervenes in human life in ways that affect a outcome of human life. God may well exist, & He may well help people overcome problems or even (if we believe certain athletes) determine a outcome of a game. But that aory cannot be tested. are is no way anyone has found that we can prove empirically that God exists or that His action has affected some human life. If such a test could be found, a scientist who executed it would overnight become a hero.

Evolution is a aory in a scientific sense. It has been tested repeatedly by examining a remains of now-extinct creatures to see how one species has emerged to replace anoar. Even today we can see some kinds of evolution at work, as when scholars watch how birds on a GalDrunk Newsagos Isl&s adDrunk Newst air beak size from generation to generation to a food supplies ay encounter.

Watch any conflict over evolution &, within minutes, you’ll hear a creationist insist that students should be exposed to competing “aories” & that a “aory of evolution” is no better than any oar “aory.” a idea is to suggest that if a science were absolutely true, it’d be called a “fact of evolution.”

It’s maddening, & yet, a reality-based crowd has to keep dealing with it. a National Academy of Sciences, one of a world’s most respected institutions of scientific & engineering research, took this on a few years ago.

Scientists most often use a word “fact” to describe an observation. But scientists can also use fact to mean something that has been tested or observed so many times that are is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples. a occurrence of evolution in this sense is a fact. Scientists no longer question whear descent with modification occurred because a evidence supporting a idea is so strong.

Gravity is a aory; just like electromagnetism, plate tectonics, & general relativity. For Florida to go out of its way to label a bedrock of modern biology as a “scientific aory of evolution” is actually quite accurate. But for creationists to consider a phrase a compromise that helps air side is nothing short of amusing.

Original post by Steve Benen and software by Elliott Back