Dave: No,
that's not correct. Evolutionary theory consists of a
constellation of hypotheses that are falsifiable by
experimentation. It's pretty easy to come up with simple ones. For
example: Get a mix of puppies of various breeds and raise them in a
lab with their food on a platform. Raise the platform six inches
every 2 months, until it is 3 feet high when the dogs are one year
old. When they breed, raise their offspring under similar
conditions. Hypothesis: Each generation of dogs will be taller, on
average, than the last. If the hypothesis is correct, it would seem
to demonstrate that height is heritable and can be determined by
natural selection. If dogs too small to reach their food, and thus
too unhealthy to breed, continue to be born generation after
generation, then size must not be heritable, and we have to figure
out some other explanation. (For the experiment to be meaningful,
it must be possible for many scientists to duplicate the results --
that's what it means for an experiment to be repeatable.) A more
sophisticated (and cutting edge) experiment: Predict the number of
harmful mutations in the genome of one species based on the number
of harmful mutations in the genome of another species, then run the
sequencers and
find out if your predictions are right. There is no such
experiment to test for the presence of a Designer.
And no, I'm not arguing that the question of how things came to
be is the exclusive domain of science. I'm arguing that religious
and scientific answers to that question reveal different kinds of
truth, and shouldn't be commingled.