Within recent years a movement, endemic to North America but slowly seeping its way into Europe, known as "Creationism" has been widening its sphere of influence and desperately trying to make its agenda known to the realms of politics and education. What is peculiar to the ideology of Creationists is not that they posit the existence of a supreme being who once blasted humanity and the whole of the universe into existence, but that they are actively opposed to the theory of evolution which, as it turns out, is much more than a fanciful notion.

I, myself, am not opposed to the belief in the existence an omnipotent deity, though the implications of such a being have never made much sense to me. I am, however, fervently in opposition to the Creationist view that evolution is a hoax or make-believe story that delusional scientists are frivolously spending their time trying to actualize in some dimly-lit laboratory.

People who claim--I have experienced this myself--that evolution is "only a theory" are egregiously misusing the term "theory." They are conflating the meaning of the word "theory" in its colloquial sense with its meaning in a scientific sense. Let me illustrate by example: Little Timmy approaches his father and exclaims "I think dragons and space burritos once ruled the world!" His father replies, "that's an interesting theory you got there, Timmy." This is far from what scientists mean by "theory."

A scientific theory is a reasonable hypothesis regarding some aspect of the universe that is generally held by a community of scientists to be true on the basis of physical evidence, extensive observation and experimentation, and reproducibility. Scientists have no agenda; they are inspired by the secrets revealed by the world around us and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Consistency with reality is a scientist's main goal when constructing a theory. And if a scientist sufficiently proves a theory false or inaccurate, he will be revered as a pioneer of a new age in scientific advancement, not condemned for his reluctance to acquiesce in false worldviews.

In the present day, an overwhelming majority of scientists are as confident in the truth of evolutionary theory as they are about the theory of gravity. In other words, that biological organisms became significantly more complex over millions of years is just as probable as apples falling to the ground when dropped.

I can't, at present, provide you with an exhaustive list of reasons for believing in the truth of evolution, because that would take up the length of a book, which I'm not prepared to write. However, I will enunciate the single most compelling reason that persuaded me to consider evolution as a fact--the predictability of evolutionary theory.

What I mean by predictability is a theory's effectiveness in guiding scientists to look for certain things in nature. For instance, there are reasons for believing that whales evolved from ancient land mammals, probably because certain environmental factors, like a diminutive food supply, compelled a mammalian species to look for sustenance elsewhere, in this case, the ocean. And given what evolutionary theory suggests--that creatures slowly adapted to their environment--scientists should be able to look to nature to find an intermediate species with the characteristics of both a land mammal and a whale. Sure enough, they have found such a species, which resembles modern day hippos. Furthermore, these hippo-like creatures were discovered to have existed chronologically as expected--before whales roamed the sea and after their mammalian progenitors died out. Many other examples like this one clutter scientific journals.

With all the evidence in support of evolution, why do many people still deny it? It probably has something to do with confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, but I'll leave that one to the psychologists. For my part, I am convinced of the reality of evolution and am not ashamed of my evolutionary past. We need to stop viewing it as a dangerous lie invented by wicked scientists and start seeing it as an integral aspect of the beauty of the natural world.