I would like to add my comments to Dr Syed Alwi Ahmad's letter No scientific proof for special creation .

Those who argue that evolution is 'just a theory' and thus has no basis beyond speculation clearly have no understanding of what constitutes a scientific theory.

A scientific theory is not a hypothesis but a complex explanation of a series of related observations or events based on proven hypotheses and verified many times by unrelated groups or individual researchers. A scientific theory is as far above speculation as humans are above amoebas.

A scientific theory, like a scientific law, is accepted by the scientific community as the truth. Unlike a scientific law, a theory refers to a series of phenomena rather than a single action. Like scientific laws, theories are well documented and beyond reasonable doubt.

Scientists continue to tinker with the component hypotheses of each theory in an attempt to make them more elegant and concise, or to make them more all-encompassing. Theories can be tweaked, but they are seldom, if ever, entirely replaced.

Biology is especially difficult to arrive at a theory, let alone a law, due to its mutable nature so that evolution will never be 'upgraded' to a law as it is too complex and is always being developed as new research comes in but it is regarded with no less veracity.

I would remind the readers that our current scientific knowledge of gravity, light, quantum mechanics and relativity which form the basis of our understanding of physics are all also 'theories'.