"That's because evolution is the only viable theory right now."
I think your're giving the theory of evolution too much credit. It's a very good theory as long as you don't try and extrapolate too much from it. Just like any theory it gets on more shaky ground when you try to read too much into it. If evolution is merely being used as a possible explaination how living things have change over a period of time, it does pretty well. However, when you start asking questions about how the process started, or you start questioning if it makes sense that random chance produced the resutls we have over the number of generations involved, the evidence becomes less convincing.
It's not contradicted, it's just that you start to see how many unanswered questions there are. You also need to look at the fact that the nature of the theory makes it adapatable to the evidence that is discovered. A combination of random chance and natural selection can explain almost anything if you just keep going back farther in time and suggest that the different pieces of evidence don't contradict each other, but are different paths of evolution.
Intelligent design is similar in it's weaknesses. You can use it to explain anything, because you can always say that just must be the way it was designed. It also becomes less convincing when you try to use it to explain too many things. However, when dealing with specifics where other theories fail to be compelling, it is a more convincing theory.
"And again, stop getting caught up in terminology. What does it even mean for something in science to be a "fact"? It's not even relevant."
You're misinterpreting my argument. My issue is that it's being taught in schools as fact by the purposful exclusion of any other theories. I agree that there are few things in science that can truely be counted on as "facts", but that's not how science is being taught in schools.
"me: It's a purposful representation of it as more than a thoery because the liberals in our education system don't want to let students consider that there may be a God.
you: "More than a theory"? This statement is meaningless! And furthermore, science doesn't even have anything to do with God!"
The adgenda of the people trying to influence the ciriculim in our public schools also has little to do with science. That's the whole point.
You're also making a mistake when you say that science has nothing to do with God. You were better off when you said science was agnostic. Science does not assume or preclude the existence of God. However, if God did create the universe, then everything we are studying throuh science is God's creation. That's something that science has been unable to prove or disprove.
You can't say that God has nothing to do with science without making an unprovable assumption.
"The fact that it can be disproved."
How? Show me how. It's impossible to prove that it cannot be disproved because it's logically impossible to prove a negative. However, by explaining things through a series of random events going back to the beginning of time you can pretty much explain anything. Evolution is a subset of the theory that there is no design to the universe, it's all random, and you can't prove otherwise theory.
It's narrowed down to a smaller scope to give it more credibility based on observations, but it's still far from being a definate explaination.
"You are completely wrong. The inability to disprove ID is what makes it non-scientific."
At best you're making what amounts to a totally pointless distinction. Are we supposed to stop thinking if our thought process leads us to something we are unable to disprove? Does that somehow remove it from being a possibility?
"Please stop putting your ignorance of the scientific method on display for all to see. The "law of gravity" didn't "starts as a theory". Laws don't start as theories. Theories don't graduate to laws. They are two different concepts."
I've been trying to put this politely, but that doesn't seem to be working, so let me try a little less politely.
Take your textbooks for how to be a scientific luddite that are telling you that theories cannot become "laws" and that things we don't know how to disprove must not beconsidered as possible out the window and start thinking for yourself.
Sir Issac Newton did not turn to page 346 of his physics textbook to discover the law of gravity.
He observed a phenomenon. He formed a hypothesis, which is really more of a guess than a theory. He investigated it and refined it into a more definate theory. He gathered convincing evidence that no one at his time was able to disprove scientifically and from that theory resulted the law of gravitation.
During the process where he was investigating and experimenting, it was a theory.
If that doesn't meet your textbook definition of a theory, then it's quite likely that the theory of evolution doesn't meet the definition either.
All this quibbling about the definition of a theory and your definition of science is a bunch of luddite B.S.
You're placing artificial constructs in the way of learning by excluding things for no reason.
Let's go back to the original issue. Why should Intelligent Design be purposfully excluded from being discussed in schools?
Because we don't want children to question evolution? I thought that evolution was a theory, and that theories should be questioned?
Is it because you feel that it's not a good enough theory? Well, it's about the only competing theory to evolution that I know of, and it's believed to be credible by a huge portion of the human population, so I think you need to come up with a better reason than it can't be disproven, expecially when you literally cannot prove that it cannot be disproven.
Plain and simple. The argument that ID should be excluded doesn't serve to give children a better education. If you want to limit the definition of science, and consider the theories of evolution and ID to be philosophies because thay don't meet your canned definition of a scientific theory, that still doesn't justify excluding ID from school ciriculums.
It really doesn't matter what labels you stick on the ideas. Evolution is an idea about how to explain how life became what it is today. So is ID. Neither is proven, both are widely believed to be credible.
Those arguing against ID being taught as a possible theory in court are doing so on the basis that it's against the 1st ammendment to do so.
The assertion that teaching ID as one possible theory and not the only possible theory is against "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" should be laughable.