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Evolution will become a fact when science can point to a species (large scale, not bacterial or viral) that has changed enough to become an entirely new species.

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Now, it is in fact true that universal gravitation, as expressed by Newton, is not 100% correct. Relativity makes tiny adjustments to it and it has been shown that those adjustments are closer to reality than the original theory was. It's entirely possible that evolution isn't the complete theory, but it is no more wrong than the theory of universal gravitation is wrong. And you can go ahead and try to convince me that the theory of gravity is just as wrong as the theories that it replaced, I will quietly laugh and leave the forum in disgust.

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Creationist seem to think that a "Theory" is any ridiculous story you can dream up. It's not.

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Here is a video,...

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even Einstein believed in God.

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"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

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"[...] The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These [...] interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

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"I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws."

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What this implies is that Hawking and Mlodinow have not even begun to address the philosophical question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” For “nothing” in their vocabulary does not have the traditional meaning “non-being” but rather means “the quantum vacuum.” They aren’t even answering the same question. Like the philosophy student who, put the question, “What is Time?” on his final exam, answered, “a weekly news magazine,” so Hawking and Mlodinow have avoided the tough question by equivocation.

If they have thus failed to answer questions (1) and (2), what about (3): Why is there this particular set of laws rather than some other? The issue here is explaining the apparently miraculous fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. Hawking and Mlodinow express this idea by observing that “in recent years physicists began asking themselves what the universe would have been like if the laws of nature were different” (p. 159).

Unfortunately, this statement is very misleading. Scientists grappling with fine-tuning are not asking what the universe would have been like if it were governed by different laws of nature. Rather they’re asking what the universe would have been like if it were governed by same laws of nature but with different values for the physical constants appearing in them and with different quantities for the initial conditions on which the laws operate. Nobody knows what a universe governed by different laws would be like! But because we’re talking about universes governed by the same laws, but with different numbers plugged in for the constants and quantities, we can calculate what kind of universe the laws would predict (just as Hawking and Mlodinow illustrate on pp. 159-62). So question (3) is malformed as stated. The real question is: why this particular set of constants and quantities rather than some other?

Now there are three possible answers to that question: physical necessity, chance, or design. Hawking and Mlodinow reject the hypothesis of physical necessity: “It appears that the fundamental numbers, and even the form, of the apparent laws of nature are not demanded by logic or physical principle” (p. 143). Since Mlodinow and Hawking want nothing to do with a Cosmic Designer, they opt for the hypothesis of chance. Since the odds of our universe’s being fine-tuned for intelligent life are so incomprehensibly remote, Hawking and Mlodinow appeal to the Many Worlds Hypothesis to augment one’s probabilistic resources to the extent that it becomes inevitable that a finely tuned universe will appear by chance somewhere in the World Ensemble or multiverse. If there are an infinite number of randomly ordered universes in the Ensemble, then a finely tuned universe will appear somewhere in the Ensemble by chance alone.

Now if the Many Worlds Hypothesis is to be serious science rather than metaphysical speculation, some sort of mechanism needs to be provided to generate the World Ensemble. The mechanism to which Hawking and Mlodinow appeal is Richard Feynman’s “sum-over-histories” approach to quantum theory. This is the approach which Hawking uses in the no boundary model to calculate the most probable history of the universe, given the no boundary condition, to our present observed state. Hawking and Mlodinow take these alternative histories which the universe might have pursued to be actual, parallel universes which are just as real as our universe.

Unfortunately, this is not science but a gratuitous piece of metaphysics. Feynman’s sum-over-histories method is just a mathematical tool for calculating the probability of a subatomic particle’s arriving at one point from another. One imagines all the possible paths the particle could have taken and then on that basis calculates the probability of its reaching the observed destination. There’s no basis for interpreting this mathematical “trick” to imply the ontological reality of concrete, spatio-temporal universes.

Hawking and Mlodinow also appeal to M-Theory or superstring theory to generate the World Ensemble of universes exhibiting various values for the constants of nature. Such a speculation is problematic in a number of ways which they do not discuss. First, the “cosmic landscape” of 10500 different possible universes consistent with nature’s laws which M-Theory allows are just that: possibilities. They are not real worlds, anymore than are Feynman’s histories. Second, it’s not clear that 10500 possibilities are sufficient to guarantee the existence of finely tuned universes in the landscape. What if the probability of fine tuning is less than 1:10500? This may be especially problematic concerning the arbitrary initial conditions. Finally, does the multiverse itself described by M-Theory exhibit fine-tuning? If it does, then the problem has only been pushed back a notch. It seems that it does, for as Hawking and Mlodinow note, M-Theory requires precisely eleven dimensions if it is to be viable, and yet the theory cannot account for why just that number of dimensions should exist.

Moreover, Mlodinow and Hawking do not even mention, much less respond to, Roger Penrose’s trenchant criticism of the Many Worlds Hypothesis for explaining fine-tuning in his The Road to Reality, namely, that if we were just a random member of a World Ensemble, then it is incomprehensibly more probable that we should be observing a much different universe than what we do, which strongly disconfirms the Many Worlds Hypothesis. There’s no excuse for Hawking’s failure to respond to his erstwhile collaborator’s criticisms of Hawking’s view.

In summary, despite Hawking and Mlodinow’s vaunted assertions and constant sniping at religious belief throughout this book, there is actually genuine profit in it for religious believers, especially for those interested in natural theology. With respect to the kalam cosmological argument, the authors’ preferred theory affirms the fact of an absolute beginning of time and the universe, which is the key premiss of the argument. With respect to the teleological argument based on fine-tuning, the authors affirm the fact of the apparently miraculous fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life. Moreover, they agree that the fine-tuning cannot be plausibly explained as due to physical necessity or by chance in the absence of a World Ensemble. Given the desperation and/or irrelevancy of their proffered ways to escape these arguments, their book turns out to be quite supportive of the existence of a transcendent Creator and Designer of the cosmos.

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nor can anyone who has died come back to verify any particular religion