I think people are getting just a trifle too exited about the "Jayhawk revolution" development: so
far as i know, this is not as if the Scopes monkey trial had been re-run, and the monkeys lost this
time: i do not know the exact wording of what was passed, but i think they just said is wasn't
*mandatory* to teach evolutionary theory in grade school - they didn't say that creationistic
viewpoints should be taught instead of, or even together with the current scientific thinking on the
subject.  Granted, this is a possibility for the future, but it has not happened yet.
        Now, as to whether Evolution is a theory, this is, as Holmes would have said "sedementary, my dear
Watson" : everything that cannot be directly observed  (and nobody has ever observed speciation
first-hand!!!) *must* be called a theory!  Evolution of some sort - whether classical Darwinian
gradualism, or "punctuated equilbrium" or "hopeful monster" stories - seems to be the best
explanation of the fossil record as we know it, so it is the prevailing theory; but like many things
in Science, such as the life-cycles of stars and galaxies or the internal workings of the sun's
core, it cannot be observed directly, therefore must remain a theory: the explanation which best
fits the observations to date.  (An example of a theory that became a fact is dinosaur reproduction:
in the early days of fossilling, dinosaur skeletons were observed to be reptilian in nature - hence
it was theorized that they would have laid eggs, like modern reptiles.  Sure enough, dinosaur eggs
were soon discovered, and that theory became a fact: nobody can now deny that certain dinosaurs for
which we have eggs and embryos, did indeed reproduce in a manner similar to modern reptiles - but
before the eggs were observed directly, their existance was simply a theory.
Cheers,
Ross M.
--
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