Georgia’s education chief had stickers asserting that evolution is “a theory, not a fact” put into high school biology textbooks. This decision was well intended, meant to teach school children that science is not properly understood as dogma, but as a body of tentative conclusions about nature, which are rightly subject to critical thinking and questioning.

Nevertheless, the sticker is in error. It is in error because it elevates evolution to the status of a theory, which it is not. It is not a theory, nor a fact, nor yet an hypothesis. The highest status that can be assigned to it is that of cultural artifact.

To be an hypothesis, the speculations of evolution would need to be formulated in such a way as to be testable by experimentation – evolution is not testable by experimentation. To be regarded as a theory, an hypothesis would have to be confirmed by the consistent results of controlled experiments, repeated many times – it has not been thus confirmed.

To be a cultural artifact, a body of speculation need only be believed by a significant number of people over a sufficient period of time, usually because it makes them feel better.

Evolution is a cultural artifact – and therefore an intellectual product unworthy of those scientists who promote it.

Almon F. Jordan Jr., Auburn