Is it possible to convince a creationist that scientific theory does not mean just an idea?
If you could convince a creationist that “theory” in the scientific context means, “an explanation of an overreaching observable and universal effect, consisting of a number of extremely well tested and supported hypotheses,” then no, you cannot. They have a presuppositional bias that must reject the fundamental scientific axioms, otherwise they could not remain Creationists when the balance of evidence is so completely against them.
It comes down to the psychology of belief. they have to believe the bible is true so they will grasp and any straw to discredit anything that suggests it is not no matter how flimsy their argument is Allready Saved is a typical case when he or she says that the study of DNA has shown that Darwin’s theory is impossible whereas the study of DNA has shown the a number of Darwin’s ideas which he could not prove were in fact correct. So either Already Saved had buried his or her head in the sand or someone has lied to him or her.
So “evolution is true (which it is)” Good to see that you have an open mind! If your claim were true then there would be no debate. As it is evolution is bset described as a hypothesis What people usually mean when they say that evolution is a theory is ‘Evolution is not proven fact, so it should not be promoted dogmatically.’ Therefore people should say that. The problem with using the word ‘theory’ in this case is that scientists use it to mean a well-substantiated explanation of data. This includes well-known ones such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Newton’s Theory of Gravity, and lesser-known ones such as the Debye–Hückel Theory of electrolyte solutions and the Deryagin–Landau/Verwey–Overbeek (DLVO) theory of the stability of lyophobic sols, etc. It would be better to say that particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture. There is a lot of confusion about the word evolution. Some people use it to mean simply Natural Selection, which is observ
