Who are you kidding? Some mythical omnipotent being with spooky language made this planet of living beings in only six days. Four billion years? Nonsense. Only 60 centuries.

"..these days"

What's sad is that this is the <i>late</i>Carl Sagan. Richard Dawkins is about the only public figure I know to carry the torch <b>these days</b>.. and he's not even that prominent in the mainstream. Nobody's revolutionized the public understanding of science like Dr. Sagan's Cosmos series since then. David Attenborough had done a bang up job with things like Planet Earth though..

BTW, Carl Sagan's widow and co-author of several of his books, Ann Druyan, is worth a google or three. NORML, anyone?

The same way reptiles are still around.

Asking that question is like asking, "I dropped one egg on the floor. Why aren't the other 11 broken?" One thing changing causes no mandatory change to anything else.

Let's say a cat is born with three eyes by some genetic mutation and lives and reproduces. Do all the other cats automatically die or grow a third eye? Of course not, that's ludicrous. If an offspring is born with a new trait (and the trait is significant enough to warrant a decision that it's different enough from those that bore it), that's effectively a new species.

Nice try, though, cook. Next?

Humans didn't descend directly from the apes or monkey's you see today. Apes, monkey's and humans all had a common ancestor, which IS NOT around today. Also, monkeys and apes did evolve, but in different directions than humans. Evolution can mean adaptations other than intelligence, like more powerful

arms and legs for climbing trees.

Mmkay. big long sigh for cookmonster. You arent listening, are you cookmonster. Human family tree branched off FROM the embarassing monkies you see at the zoo. Humanz know not to drink their pee (most of the time) and we learned that thousands of years ago. Thats why we drive cars and know things like science. Were like a diffrent kind of monkey. a smart monkey! I understand your logic cook. Its wrong though! I am the logic judge!

Huh? I will have to assume you mean that

all theories can change as new information is gathered, right? That's science. Unlike...let's say...religious dogma

which never changes regardless of evidence.

No, wait, seriously? "Only Theory"?

This isn't like "Well, my theory is that..." this is scientific theory, "in science a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations which is predictive, logical and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections or inclusion in a yet wider theory. Commonly, a large number of more specific hypotheses may be logically bound together by just one or two theories. As a general rule for use of the term, theories tend to deal with much broader sets of universals than do hypotheses, which ordinarily deal with much more specific sets of phenomena or specific applications of a theory." (taken from wikipedia)

So, scientific theory is something that has, over many observations and experiments, has proven an hypothesis or several, true, according to what is known about the subject today. By naming it a "theory" it means that, as of now, scientists have not been able to disprove it.

What you are describing is a hypothesis. In the scientific community, a theory is something that explains the mechanics of that which can be observed and/ or tested.

When someone goes to school for any sort of scientific career, they learn the theory behind their field (e.g., nuclear theory, acoustic theory, quantum theory, etc.).