First, I want to talk a little about how a notion is established as a scientific fact. To illustrate, I drew a line here from “Science Fiction” to “Scientific Fact.” On the left, is science fiction, i.e., a fictional story that uses scientific jargon to boost its’ believability. In the center of this line, is what I call “Scientific Plausibility”. These are theories that could be true, but just have not been verified by experiment. Science normally works this way, you get an idea, or theory, but it’s not until you verify it by experiment that you are able to claim it is a scientific fact. Notice that the differentiator between fiction and fact is experiment.
I had an 8th grade science teacher who used to say: “I’ll believe anything you say, just prove it”. Well put. Now, what about evolution? By evolution, I’m talking about the popular theory, the Big Bang, the primordial soup, organisms coming out of the oceans, eventually over millions of years evolving into people.
But how much of this story is verifiable by experiment? For the sake of discussion, I’ve put the study of origins in the plausibility area, shown by this bracket on the slide.