This is one of best explanations for why it's ridiculous to say "evolution is just a theory". The evolution deniers of Idiot America do not understand because they're uneducated morons. This was at the Dover trial in 2005.

Q. Dr. Miller, isn't evolution just a theory?

A. Evolution is just a theory, in the same way that the atomic theory of matter is just a theory, the Copernican theory of the solar system is just a theory, or the germ theory of disease is just a theory. But theories, as I emphasized earlier, are not hunches, they're not unproven speculation. Theories are systems of explanations which are strongly supported by factual observations and which explain whole sets of facts and experimental results.

Q. And how do you distinguish, say, a theory from a fact?

A. A fact is a repeatable, verifiable observation or a result. So, for example, in the earlier demonstratives I showed, it is a fact that there is an altered initiator sequence on the beta-globin pseudogene. It's also a fact that there are five working copies of this gene on Chromosome Number 11. All of these are facts. We can test them, we can verify them, we can put them together.

But facts by themselves don't tell us a whole lot. A very famous biologist once said that without theories to tie them together, biology is just stamp collecting. And what they meant by that was that the production of isolated individual facts is unimportant unless you can tie all those facts together in an explanatory framework, and what a theory is is just such a mechanism.

So evolutionary theory takes the sorts of facts that I have pointed out in the last few slides that the Court has looked at and ties them into a coherent whole by common explanation, for example, by the hypothesis of common descent.

Q. So the term "theory" has a particular meaning within science distinct from everyday usage?

A. Absolutely. And when we're out on the street and we say, I have a theory on what the best way to drive to Pittsburgh is given the traffic or I have a theory on whether or not it's going to rain this afternoon, we mean, in ordinary conversation, a hunch, speculation, a guess.

When we say "theory" in science, we mean a broad, overarching, explanatory explanation that's very strongly supported by fact and by factual evidence and that ties all of this together in an explanatory framework that helps us make testable predictions and testable hypotheses. And if it doesn't do that, it's not a scientific theory.

Q. And is your understanding of theory and fact, as those terms are used in science, reflected by the scientific community?

A. Oh, I think it's fair to say that the understanding that I've expressed here in the Court today is exactly the understanding possessed by the members of the scientific community elsewhere.

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There is a lot of interesting stuff about evolution at this website:

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Trial transcript: Day 1 (September 26), AM Session, Part 2