The Washington Post had an excellent article in last Sunday's Outlook section on problems with discussions of the Theory of Evolution.

The | o ry, n:
1 An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.
2 A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

Unfortunately, the above definitions aren't the exact ones used in the subhead to the Post's article, but their web page cuts off the text, and I no longer have Sunday's paper (good little recycler that I am), so I grabbed definitions from Dictionary.com which closely matched what the Post had used originally.

Regardless, this points out a fundamental problem in many discussions about Evolution vs Creationism. While both sides use what appears to be the same term ("theory"), they're not really using the same word. Scientists call it the "Theory of Evolution" because it explains the facts we've discovered in nature, while Creationists take "theory" to mean a hypothesis, a supposition, an assumption, a conjecture. Scientific theory is none of these things.

Personally, I believe that God created the universe, and He put the laws of physics and so forth in place as His mechanism of creation. For me, Science and Religion don't compete. And truthfully, I don't see how they can dispute each other. Science is based on observable fact. Religion is based on faith. We get into trouble when we try to mix the two together.