It is only a theory that stars go through a natural sequence delineated on the Hartzsprung-Russell diagram. No one has actually seen a star coelesce and die. No one has actually seen a continent drift with their own two eyes. It is only a theory. No one has seen gravity at work in the intersteller void in order to operate at galactic distances, it is only a theory, and a somewhat troubled theory, at that. Are you ready to attack the theory of gravity?
Could you tell us what is happening when a zebra, a horse, and a donkey mate? Could you tell us why God created ring species? Could you tell us why a Camel and a Llama can mate? How about a lion and tiger? Are they all the same species? Do you think a teacup poodle and a Great Dane can mate successfully?
By being extremely selective about what evidence you are willing to consider, You are constructing your own version of evolutionary theory, based on kind of a comic-book oversimplification of what a species is (treating it as if it were a physical entity with boundaries, rather than an arbitrary human convienience) and soundly refuting that. Nice, easy work, if you can get it.
As is often the case with soft degrees, Your education was, on the available evidence, extremely lightweight regarding the nature and philosophy of science. You are entitled to your rude opinions about how gullible or venal, or uncritical scientists are, but you are misrepresenting the depth of your authority on the subject. Evolutionary theory is highly falsifiable, and has withstood enumerable tests, every time, for example, that we send grad students out to dig for specific things, and they find it in greater abundance than pipeline diggers find it. If your allergy to historic data were to be taken seriously, we'd have to abandon galactic astronomy entirely, and I don't see that happening, do you? Before you throw your intellectual weight around on this forum, you'd be well served to come to a better understanding of why we have to trust inductive reasoning, dispite it's inherent frailties, about historical events, if we are to do science.
As the vast majority of scientists would tell you, if asked, evolutionary theory stands on ground that is, at present, much firmer than that of, for example, the astronomical theory of gravity--which presently can't explain the outer orbits of galaxies by referring to anything you can, at the present moment, touch, taste or feel--even with the help of instruments.
It is a shame to turn an advanced degree into a validation token for marginal crackpot theories that fly in the face of the most profoundly amazing co-incidence of correlating evidence--the triple co-ordination of the geological column, the fossil tree, and the DNA mutational clock-- that science has ever seen. As much as anything else on this planet, evolutionary theory is a confirmed science, and needs to be taught as such, if we are going to teach science in the classroom. if you want to teach Sci-fi, or religeous history, then you have my blessing on ID. If you want to teach science. Teach science as a scientists understand it, not as politicians, or science cranks with obvious axes to grind, understand it.
Just to clarify a bit :)
Your points on glactic astronomy are well taken - I freely admit I know nothing of this field and I understand that the vernacular might be quite different when discussing evidence on this level. I have been out of my own "ivory tower" for ten years now, (and the only reason I brought up my much-maligned "soft degree" was in response to a cheap-shot by narby, who suggested I lacked the education to be homeschooling my kids.) I am not putting myself out there as an expert on anything - including the ID / evolution debate. If anything, this speaks to my frustration that my own education was lacking in this regard! In my courses, it was just understood that everything evolved from slime, and no one in all of my years of school took the time to look critically at the theory of evolution and talk about its strengths and weaknesses. It has only been in the last year that I have started educating myself on the debate and I am astounded at the amount of (scientific, not religious) information never even touched on in my high school and college biology courses. Right now, evolution is being re-evaluated in scientific, educational, and policy circles, and most of us grew up never even knowing it was anything less than the gospel truth.
This is why I think that evolution should be presented as a theory (with an explanation of what a theory is) alongside competing theories so that the strengths and weaknesses of all can be examined. There would be no problem with this if we were talking about Superstring Theory or galactic astronomy, I'm sure - the problem here is that the Left has an agenda to keep anything which might call the secular explanation of our existance out of the minds of our young people, even if it means telling them something is the truth, when it may not be so.
It is THEIR politics getting in the way of the search for the truth because they are afraid that anything other than evolution will mean God and that would be unacceptable to them.