A while, I heard a woman with channel 11 (an educational station)introduce a piece of information with these words "You want to hear a fact?" Then she went on about the ancestry of some bird, how it evolved from a certain dinosaur. This raised my ire as I think of the mental conditioning effect of this statement. Kids being taught to trust people based on their education.

     I don't know if the lady knew what facts or theory are but the confusion of the two confuses the minds of people, including children, who don't think about the difference of fact and theory. My issue is not whether what she says is right or wrong but with the misuse of the word fact. We receive data from the world and the data is interpreted. That interpretation is called a theory.

     Sometimes I suspect that just because a scientist interprets data a certain way, that interpretation somehow is elevated into a fact. Nobody knows the past (how the world developed), and the records (geological, fossil, etc.) give us clues. These clues are interpreted, and these interpretations are influenced by prior beliefs that are held by those who interpret the records. An atheistic scientist would never say that there is an intelligent designer that guided the development of a species, for example. He is invested in his prior belief that there is no God.  

     The truth is most of what we know are based on interpretaions- the sum of the data presented to us and our experiences. This goes for all areas of knowledge, and even feelings. You may say your parents love you by how they act towards you. However, you interpret these actions as loving because you feel loved (data) and other people say that their actions are loving (data). Its possible that people can seem loving on the outside but have no real affection for others. An abused child may not consider loving actions to be loving because people who 'loved" them abused them. We walk through life trusting our interpretations.  

     Granted, scientists and other scholars may have more knowledge of the data and has interacted with the interpretions of that data. However, whatever interpretation they come up with is a theory or interpretation. It does not make it absolute truth.

     Knowing that most of the things we know are inerpretations of the data should lead us to humility. Your educational degrees does not necessarily make your words truer than other people's words. You may guide the less educated by your knowledge of the data, but you don't determine truth or what's best in all situations.