Theory vs Law

I hate to bring this up again, but I think it needs some clarification. There is a big difference between a Science law and a theory. As I've said before, religion is based on faith, but science is based on proven theories for the most part. There is no such thing as faith (a belief in something that can't be proven) in science. Science requires both verifiable evidence and duplication of experimental results.

However, most of science is theoretical. In order for a theory to become law it must be proven over and over again for a long time. There aren't that many laws in science, and most of them are rather simple like V=I X R. This is Ohm's law, which says that volts are equal to amps times ohms. All of electrical work is dependent on this law. There are many other laws in electricity and mechanics that have been proven valid many times and are universally accepted. Another example of laws in science is Newton's laws of motion. These are accepted as proven.
Most theories in science are about things that happened long ago or are impossible to experiment with.

Theories are like records in sports, weather and other changeable things; they're made to be broken. That's how science works. A theory is only as good as the facts it covers. If a fact is found that violates the theory it gets altered to fit the new data. This is especially true in astronomy.

I bring this up because someone commented that they don't accept the Big Bang Theory. There's nothing wrong with that because it's only a theory. No one was around when it happened or is able to duplicate it. The Big Bang theory fits the current data. Until some new data refutes it or is not consistent with it, the Big Bang Theory will remain as the way in which the universe came about.

There are lots of other theories that propose different ways that the universe was created. Most of these theories are based on quantum physics and complicated mathematics. They have no data to back them up. The truth is that they may be just as valid as the Big Bang theory.

One good example of a theory change happened when the International Astronomical Union degraded Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet; this was the result of astronomers finding other planetoids in the Kuiper belt that were larger then Pluto. Remember, at one time Pluto was considered the outer edge of the solar system. New data indicates that the solar system is much larger than we had imagined. Much of this new data has only been recently obtained.

Another theory that got blown apart is the one that proposed that the universe was slowing down and would stop expanding. New data indicated that instead of slowing down, the expansion is actually accelerating.

I present the currently accepted theories in my essays on science because that's what's accepted now. That could change, and I would go with whatever new theory comes up. I accept all ideas and don't believe that what I accept is absolutely true. They are just theories. My theory is to relax and go with the flow!

Thanks for reading.