I was recently fortunate enough to witness a high school biology

teacher get hit by a question about Evolution.

In early September, I stopped by to visit my High School Bio teacher.
I try to make a trip back to see him once a year, largely because he
was the man who inspired me to pursue science as a career. It has been
almost seven years since I graduated, but he's still teaching the same
course. I make it a point when I come to sit at one of the lab benches
in the back of the classroom to sit in on one of his lectures; just for
old time's sake, I suppose.
At any rate, he was starting evolution that day (he has some leeway as
to the order in which he covers the material; he usually puts evolution
near the beginning since, as Dobzhanski put it "Nothing in biology
makes sense, except in the light of evolution."). So, as he began into
his lecture; starting with some of the history behind it, one student
(clearly in a somewhat confrontational mood) pointed out that the
evolution was "just a theory."
I spent four years completing an undergraduate degree in physics, I'm
now within eight months of completing a PhD. in Biophysics. So when I
say that in the five minutes that followed, I witnessed the single best
explanation of what a scientific theory entails that I have ever seen;
I want you to understand my full meaning. I wish I'd been taking
notes, because the lecture was simply brilliant; so what follows is
largely me paraphrasing him from my (admittedly somewhat sketchy)
memory of the event.
First, he made sure that he had the class' attention: "what I'm going
to tell you in the next few minutes is the single most important thing
you will learn in this year in *any* of your science courses."
"Your classmate has just pointed out that evolution is just a theory.
He is absolutely, 100% correct. This begs the question: what, exactly,
is a theory? When I'm talking about science, and I talk about a
scientific theory, does that mean that I'm not sure that it's right?"
The class was silent.
"Tell you what, we'll come back to that one. Okay, let's look at
something that you might be a little more familiar with: gravity.
Gravity is a theory. Now, show of hands; how many of you are about to
start gluing your feet to the floor?"
Nobody raised their hands.
He turned around and started writing on the board. "Any science;
whether we're talking physics, biology or chemistry; is trying to
answer two questions: 1) What happens?" He wrote it down on the
blackboard behind him, "and 2) how does it happen?"
"Okay, show of hands: does anybody doubt that gravity exists?"
Again, nobody raised their hands.
He removed his left shoe and held it out at an arm's length (I remember
that he seemed to find a reason to remove one of his shoes in each of
his lectures; he said it makes the students pay attention), "if I let
go of this shoe, how many of you think that it won't fall?"

Nobody raised their hands.

He dropped the shoe, and continued in one socked foot. He's a little
quirky that way. "We see evidence of gravity all the time. Planets in
their orbits, people sticking to the ground instead of flying off into
space; dropped shoes hitting the ground; gravity literally holds the
world together. I think it's fair to say that we have 'what happens'
pretty well worked out, don't we?"
Murmers of agreement went through the class.
"So, here's the $64,000 question: if we're so sure that we know what is
happening with gravity, if we're so sure we know what gravity does; why
is it just a theory?"
For a moment, the class was silent.
"You don't have to raise your hands, just shout out whatever comes to
mind."
One girl in the front row piped up: "we don't know how it happens."
"Exactly," the teacher agreed, "now, let's bring this back to
evolution. Evolution is possibly the single most-supported theory in
biology. The fossil record supports it, genetics supports it. The
evidence for evolution is every bit as solid as the evidence for
gravity. So why are we still calling it a theory?"
"Because we don't know how it happens?" It was someone different this
time; it may even have been the student who asked the original
question; but I couldn't tell for sure. It was either him or someone
sitting close to him.
"Exactly. What a scientific theory is is the explanation which fits
all observable facts. If you perform an experiment which contradicts
your theory, the theory is changed to explain this new data. The
theory of evolution has been changed and added to countless times since
Darwin first proposed it; it will be changed and added to countless
times in the future, the day may come when many of Darwin's ideas will
be seen as absurd by the scientific community; but at this moment, the
theory of evolution is the only scientific theory that explains all the
observable data we have in our hands right now."
"Is evolution a theory? Absolutely. Does this mean that we're not
sure that it's true? Absolutely not."
That, in my humble opinion, is how you address challenges to evolution.
With a little luck, students might actually learn something.
--Drew