The argument that is typically made here against the Theory of Evolution is that it is just a theory. This is left hanging out there leading the audience to fill in the blank - the blank being that science has yet to prove it to be true. This stems from a lack of understanding, or intentional miscommunication, on what a scientific theory is. Part of the problem here can be the equation of a scientific term with a conversational term. We use theory in common language, and when doing so, theory generally means something more like an idea or guess. This is definitely not what a scientific theory is. A scientific theory is as good as it gets. It will never transition from a theory to a law, although there is probably a general belief that it will.
A scientific law describes a what about nature. A law is short, typically mathematical, and does not address the how. Laws are typically created when repeated observation shows a very repeatable result, and it describes that result. For example, the equation F=ma is a very well known scientific law. This law describes a relationship between force, mass, and accelleration. It does not in any way try to describe why this relationship exists, it merely provides a mechanism for prediction. A good example of the relationship of a scientific law and a scientific theory is gravity. The law of gravity has been around for a long time. It was proposed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1687. Newton had no clue why what the scientific law described actually happened. He did not even try to explain why. He just said, when you drop an apple, this is how gravity makes it move. I don't know why, but it always happens, so let's make it a law. A theory that covers gravity did not come around until 1916 when Einstein published his works on General Relativity. This describes how gravity works. But the Theory of General Relativity will never become the Law of General Relativity. Theory is as good as it gets.
Now, it is true that there are various degrees of confidence in scientific theories. Every theory out there is not as solid as the Theory of General Relativity. So one thing that should be understood is just how stable is the Theory of Evolution. To date, there have been no published articles in peer reviewed journals that invalidate the Theory of Evolution. And there are a massive number of articles that test the Theory of Evolution. The entire field of Genetics is based on the Theory of Evolution. Every paper on Genetics does, from a certain point of view, give evidence on the Theory of Evolution.
Hopefully it is obvious that this attack on the Theory of Evolution is not a valid one. Any educated person on the Scientific Method should react to this attack by correctly assessing the attacker as uninformed, which will certainly not help either the evangelistic or apologetic effort.
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