Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

As pointed out in the previous section, it is not possible to prove any scientific theory.Thus, the difference between a scientific and unscientific theory cannot be its provability.However, the difference lies in the fact that, for an unscientific theory, there is not even a theoretical possibility of overturning it.If someone is of the opinion that all species of creatures were created by an omnipotent God, he might well be right; nonetheless, his theory of the formation of life will not be scientific as it is not possible to in any way disprove it.If God is truly omnipotent, then He could foist any arbitrary results on us in our experiments and observations.In contrast, an enormous number of specific consequences follow from the theory of evolution and these can be gradually tested empirically.If these consequences were to be shown not to be valid, we would have to reject the theory of evolution.For example, if paleontologists were to demonstrably find a Paleozoic fossil of a mammal or if molecular biologists were to discover that there is usually no agreement amongst the phylogenetic trees created on the basis of various genes, i.e. that each gene would have its own unique evolutionary history, we would have to reject the theory of evolution in its present form.Thus the theory of evolution cannot be proven, in more or less the same way that any other scientific theory cannot be proven.However, it can very easily be shown to be false, and thus it rightly belongs amongst fully sound scientific theories.