No one knows everything. Not even God. Think about it, if God knew everything, no one would have to pray. Everything needed or wanted would already be known. So, give it a rest; just accept what is. Now, about ignorance; it is a good thing to be ignorant, as long as you are aware there is much “you don’t know, that you don’t know.” The safe bet is to assume that someone else knows a lot more than you do about most everything and start your learning from there. A key to advancing from ignorance to understanding can be found in the way that knowledge is evaluated: the hierarchy of knowledge.
THOUGHT This is the easiest level as everything that passes through the conscious mind is a thought. Most thoughts are certified knowledge-free and justify their existence only by being a pathway from “What!” to “Why?”
IDEA When a thought becomes a question, its destination is often “Oh, that’s because . . .” followed by an idea that will serve to explain the stimulus for the thought. If the thought is recurring, its next stop might be belief. This is not a good thing, mostly because all of the above is just in your head; without reference to any source of independent information whatsoever.
BELIEF This is the last stop on the subway of the sub-conscious; a system of beliefs is part of what makes us human. There are many things unknown and downright frightening in the physical world, love and death for example, that prompt the mind to create an explanation to suit the occasion. This is all private, personal and confidential, of course. As such, a belief is usually untested, particularly when any testing will influence the outcome of the experiment. Testing a belief about death never ends well; do NOT attempt. A belief about love will often involve a leap of faith, so prepare for an unhappy outcome. There is no other way.
OPINION Expressing an opinion is the number one human activity—here I am at work on one right now—and whether it is verbal or written or emotion or even just the look, it communicates to the external world what is going on inside your head. The opinion seeks validation, or at least recognition, that the idea and the thought behind it was real. (Meaning: not an hallucination).
This is why it is important to distinguish between ideas and beliefs when forming and expressing an opinion. The ‘private and personal’ aspect of belief is there for a reason: other people have their own belief and are not at all keen on hearing about yours. There are exceptions; misjudging the occasion for an exception is often fatal to a conversation or sometimes a relationship. When in doubt; don’t.
CONJECTURE This is where the fun begins: whereas everyone is entitled to their own opinion, a conjecture raises the possibility for refutation. In fact, refutation is an invited guest. The very nature of a conjecture is that there is incomplete information and the person is open to receiving it. Inherent in this level of ignorance is the condition that it will be possible to prove the conjecture false.
The line between opinion and conjecture is drawn when the owner of an opinion wants to add you to its adherents. Any attempt to convince, implies an invitation to refute. The advice to new players is to preface all opinions with “I think . . .” and leave it at that. There are many occupations which depend on convincing someone to do something that they had not considered doing: sales comes to mind. Practitioners of those fields recognize that they are crossing a boundary and do not get huffy when rebuffed. If you are a salesman, you do not pitch your friends.
HYPOTHESIS This is where the proponent of a conjecture gets serious, formulates an hypothesis and devises a way of testing by experiment, with the specific intention of disproving the hypothesis. That’s right; you try to find it false. At this level of ignorance, any failure of the experiment is cause to discard the idea and start over. {In the real world, most people try the experiment again.} Here’s another twist: anyone can run an experiment to test the hypothesis. That is the way science operates.
THEORY When an hypothesis survives testing by experiment without a failure within the margin of error, it can be regarded as a theory by people in the know. Even then, it remains open to testing and refutation, or in many cases either limitation or extension. If refuted; it is finished. Newton’s theory of gravitation was limited to slow speeds and stay away from stars and black holes by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. Still works fine in our solar system.
LAW Generally a theory which has withstood testing over a period of time and in diverse circumstances will result in a formula that becomes shorthand for the theory. Thus Newton’s Law of universal gravitation and Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion are still on the books. Same goes for Boyle’s Law of ideal gases and the Three Laws of thermodynamics. Getting a formula with your name on it is the pinnacle of knowledge, often in a very limited field. Boltzmann, Lagrangian, Hamiltonian in Physics qualify. Certainly there are many more in other sciences.
So when someone says “it’s just a theory,” they are being unjust: ask what they propose as an alternative. Then ask how their alternative was tested. If the response is “it’s in the Bible,” tell them God disagrees with the Bible. No arguing with a belief. Or with a Sea Story for that matter.