Quote Originally Posted by Wide Eyed Wanderer View Post
Frankly, why it is still called the 'Theory of Evolution' is beyond me; at least if it is called that then we should also have the 'Theory of Christianity' or the 'Theory of Islam'.
That has mostly do with the fact that the colloquial understanding a lot of people have about the definition of "theory" conflicts with what it actually means in scientific terms. The layman is prone to think that a theory is simply a suggested but as of yet untested or unproven explanation for a phenomenon. When in actuality a scientific theory doesn't get to be upgraded from a hypothesis into a theory before it has gone through the most rigorous and demanding trials and tribulations known to science. In terms of certainty, a theory is no less certain to be true than a law of physics for example. They are essentially the same thing, in the respect that both are explanations of a series of interrelated facts. But there was a point in history where the term law was deemed to be unsuitable for such explanations, having the connotation that they are something man-made. So something that would previously have been given the term law was preferred to be called a theory instead. So Newton's "Law of Gravity" and "Laws of Thermodynamics" are just as much theories as Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" or Darwin's "Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection", and vice versa.

So it is quite amusing when opponents of, say, evolution use the phrase "It's just a theory" to support their own position. When in fact that is the most noble compliment one can give to evolutionary biology, given how much it takes for a thing to become a theory.