Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Why The Theory of Gravity is Incomplete, Unlike The Theory of Evolution

It may come as a surprise to some that scientists at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, Germany, together with colleagues from the Transylvanian University of Brașov, Romania, have proposed a new theory of gravity, which they recently published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

Even flat-earthers do not attempt to deny gravity. No one who does not require medication doubts that gravity is the force that prevents us from floating off into space and causes objects to fall when dropped. No one seriously believes they can step off a tall building and come to no harm because gravity is “just a theory”.

And yet, despite its obvious and universal effects, gravity remains incompletely understood. Unlike evolution—which can be directly observed and whose underlying mechanisms have been well established for decades—we still lack a complete explanation of how gravity works. Newton described it mathematically as an attractive force between masses, proportional to those masses and obeying an inverse-square law, but he did not explain why masses attract one another. Einstein later recast gravity as the curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy, with objects following the shortest paths through that curved geometry. However, gravity has never been successfully reconciled with quantum mechanics and appears to be a phenomenon that belongs to the macroscopic domain of relativity. Although most physicists assume that relativity and quantum mechanics must ultimately be unified, a quantum theory of gravity remains elusive.

In other words, as with evolution, we know that gravity is real, and we understand its effects extremely well. But unlike evolution—where we possess a comprehensive and coherent explanatory framework—we currently have only incomplete and sometimes conflicting theories for gravity’s underlying cause.

Despite this, creationists never dispute the theory of gravity on the grounds of these gaps. The reason is obvious: their sacred collection of Bronze Age myths makes no claims about gravity at all. Its authors took gravity for granted, seeing no need to explain it, and therefore left no theological foothold for modern denial. There are no angels holding planets in orbit or magical forces suspending objects in mid-air, and so gravity is quietly accepted.

Why “Just a Theory” Only Ever Applies to Evolution.
In everyday language, a theory often means a guess or a hunch. In science, however, the word has a very different and much more rigorous meaning — and this distinction is central to understanding why the phrase “just a theory” is both wrong and selectively misused.

Observation vs explanation

Science separates observations from the theories that explain them.

Observations are facts about the world: things that can be seen, measured, tested, or repeatedly confirmed.
Theories are explanatory frameworks that account for those observations, make predictions, and unify many independent lines of evidence.

For example:

Objects fall when dropped — that is an observation.
Species change over generations — that is an observation.
Continents move — that is an observation.

No serious person disputes any of these.

What a scientific theory really is

A scientific theory is not a tentative idea waiting to be promoted to “fact”. It is the highest level of explanation in science, built from:

repeated observation
experimental testing
predictive power
internal consistency
successful survival of attempts to falsify it

Theories explain why observed facts occur and how they are connected.

Why evolution is targeted

Evolution is unusual only in that its theory and its observations are openly discussed together in education and public science communication. We talk explicitly about the theory of evolution because it explains:

why fossils appear in a consistent temporal order
why genetics forms nested family trees
why populations adapt to environments
why antibiotic resistance evolves in real time

Creationists exploit this openness by pretending that questioning the explanation somehow casts doubt on the observations themselves — which it does not.

Why gravity gets a free pass

Gravity, like evolution, is both:

an observed phenomenon, and
the subject of theoretical explanations

Yet no one says gravity is “just a theory” when stepping off a ladder.

That is because gravity has no religious origin myth competing with it. There is no theological claim about how gravity works, so there is no ideological incentive to sow confusion about the word theory.

Selective scepticism

The phrase “just a theory” is not a scientific argument. It is a rhetorical device used selectively against explanations that contradict religious beliefs.

Science accepts uncertainty honestly:

facts are established by evidence
theories explain those facts
explanations improve as knowledge grows

Evolution comfortably meets every one of these standards — which is precisely why it must be misrepresented rather than refuted.

The German and Romanian research team have now proposed a model of gravity that they argue can account for the accelerating expansion of the Universe without invoking the mysterious concept of “dark energy”. Their work is also summarised in a brief news release from Universität Bremen.

New attempt to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe
Why is the universe expanding at an ever-increasing rate? This is one of the most exciting yet unresolved questions in modern physics. As it cannot be explained by our current model of the physical world — consisting of Einstein's general theory of relativity and the standard model of particle physics — researchers assume the existence of a mysterious “dark energy” that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. However, its origin remains unclear to this day. Now, an international team of researchers from the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen and the Transylvanian University of Brașov in Romania are proposing a new perspective on this phenomenon. They have concluded that the expansion of the universe could be explained — at least in part — without the need for dark energy.
Physicists describe the evolution of the universe by the general theory of relativity and the so-called Friedmann equations. However, in order to explain the observed expansion of the universe within this framework, it is necessary to add an additional “dark energy term” into the equations by hand.

This unsatisfactory solution led the researchers at ZARM and their Romanian colleagues to investigate a different approach. Their findings, published today in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, are based on an extension of general relativity (GR) known as Finsler gravity, a framework that has been developed throughout recent years. Unlike the original explanatory approach of GRT, it allows for a more accurate modeling of the gravitational effects of gases, as it is based on a more general spacetime geometry than the one used in GR.

It does work without “dark energy”

When the research team calculated the Finsler extension of the Friedmann equations, they made an exciting discovery: the Finsler-Friedmann equations already predict an accelerated expansion of the universe even in a vacuum – without the need to introduce additional assumptions or “dark energy” terms.

This is an exciting indication that we may be able to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe, at least in parts, without dark energy, on the basis of a generalized spacetime geometry. This new geometric point of view on the dark energy problem opens up new possibilities for better understanding the laws of nature in the cosmos.

Christian Pfeifer, lead author
ZARM
University of Bremen Bremen, Germany.

Publication:
Pfeifer, Christian; Voicu, Nicoleta; Friedl-Szász, Annamária; Popovici-Popescu, Elena
From kinetic gases to an exponentially expanding universe — the Finsler-Friedmann equation
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 10 (2025) 050, DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2025/10/050

The contrast is therefore instructive. Creationists are perfectly comfortable accepting the theory of gravity despite the fact that it contains genuine and openly acknowledged gaps. Physicists do not yet know how gravity fits into a unified quantum framework, and competing models exist to explain its deepest nature. None of this causes anyone to doubt that gravity is real, measurable, predictive, or indispensable to our understanding of the Universe.

Evolution, by contrast, is not burdened by such foundational uncertainty. The fact of evolution is established beyond reasonable doubt, and the theory that explains it is internally consistent, empirically grounded, and supported by mutually reinforcing evidence from genetics, palaeontology, comparative anatomy, biogeography, developmental biology, and direct observation. Its mechanisms are known, testable, and observed in operation today.

The reason evolution is singled out has nothing to do with science. It is rejected not because it is weak, incomplete, or speculative, but because it contradicts a set of Bronze Age origin myths that make specific claims about the history of life. Gravity makes no such theological demands, and so its theoretical gaps are quietly tolerated, even ignored.

In short, “just a theory” is not a scientific objection but a selective slogan. Where science conflicts with scripture, the language of uncertainty is weaponised; where it does not, the same standards are never applied. The acceptance of gravity and the denial of evolution reveal not a problem with science, but the inconsistency of those who claim to judge it.

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