Good points Stefan. I think there is some misunderstanding in the general public
about exactly what a theory is. On the other hand it seems to me that we in the
scientific community sometimes forget as well. Theories ar essentially models.
Since we are trying to describe very complicated phenomenon with our models they
always fall short of describing "reality". We know that Newton's theory of
gravitation is wrong (it fails to predict some phenomenon). We know that general
relativity is at least incomplete and therefore wrong. The same can be said for
evolution. Historically scientific theories have constantly been updated.
Sometimes we update by tweaking, sometimes we update by completely replacing old
ideas with a better model. We should remember, as I say to my classes often,
everything we teach in science class is probably wrong, but sometimes it is
useful.
When we approach the teaching of evolution or creationism (or anything else for
that matter) in a science class as presenting "true" descriptions of life I
believe we are going down the wrong path. We should instead equip students to
join the debate by enlightening them about: 1) the phenomenon we are trying to
describe. 2) the theories used to describe such phenomenon, past and present. 3)
the evidence that tends to strengthen the theory and the evidence that tends to
weaken the theory. Anything beyond this is essentially faith based instruction
and is not science.