My brother has trouble recognizing evolution to be a fact, so I had to explain to him to what extent it is not just a theory, but the most important, overarching and unifying idea since, well, anything, really.
I bet there are better ways to do it, but I went with the metaphor of gravity being a theory too. It has taken root deep in me since the first time I heard it waay back by Dawkins, if I am not mistaken. And I love physics, so the two field tie nicely and effortlessly for me.
Here is how our talk went down, I am A, he is J:
J: So how certain can you be Darwinism is true?
A: ..I am 100% percent confident it is exceptionally useful and explanation-providing, if that is what you mean by being true.
J: Riight...
A: Here is how awesome evolutionary theory is, let me use the theory of gravity as an example. We know that stuff falls down and people have tried explaining this phenomenon from the dawn of time, Greeks took a shot at it, but sucked; Newton was really the first dude to give us a decent clue about how gravity works. Newton explains gravity as a pulling force between mass and you probably remember the formula for Newton's general gravity from high-school.
This formula alone allows calculating the trajectories of stellar bodies with good accuracy and was used by many thinkers to predict eclipses and similar events, giving solid experimental evidence that Newton had gotten it right. Well, actually only less wrong than the Greeks.
What Newton could not have been expected to include in his theory were electromagnetic waves, which are without stationary mass. To Newton only mass produced gravity. Then this dude Einstein came along and showed that gravity can be seen not as a pulling force, but as a curvature of the spacetime in the presence of energy (be it in the form of matter or field). Einstein's theory of gravity called the theory of general relativity is more precise than Newton's. This is illustrated by how Einstein knew he was onto something: he did not just look at the formula and think it beautiful or whatever, he used his calculation to make a prediction - using general relativity he correctly predicted and accounted for the extra 43 seconds of arc per century in the precession of the perihelion of Mercury Newton's theory could not account for.
Several more experiments have been conducted since the 1920s and all of them confirm Einstein's theory of gravity. This upgrade in precision general relativity provides over Newton's theory is not a merely theoretical fancy either. The increased precision is what allows precise data transfer via orbital satellites in technologies such as mobile communications and GPS - building satellite technology on Newton's theory alone would result in ~10km errors in position readings a day. You being a geologist surely can appreciate this, right?
J: Yup.
A: So Einstein's general relativity is at least a thousand times more precise a theory of gravitation than the next best thing - Newton's law of universal gravitation. Now I can finally get back to evolution. If Darwinian evolution is the analogue of Einstein's general relativity in biology, what is the next best thing, the biological analogue to Newton?
J: Er, the Bible?
A: Yes, a creation story of one sort or another. So when you compare Newton to Einstein in terms of precision, you get a thousandfold increase, but remember that Newton's theory is still pretty sweet - you can calculate where planets will be even after of millions of years, you can calculate how projectiles will fly and fall, all that great, useful stuff.
Creation myths, on the other hand, have little basis in experiment and have zero predictive value, whereas the theory of evolution has been supported by every experiment ever tried. It is the only theory we have so far that correctly accounts for observations in biology, paleontology, molecular biology, genetics, anthropology, medicine and other fields of inquiry. Furthermore, the theory of evolution has immense predictive capacity since it can, in theory, model any possible future advancement in said fields. And here I want you to pause and soak it up to the core of your being - when you compare the predictive and explanatory value of a creation myth to that of Darwinian evolution, you do not get a factor of a thousand. You get a factor of infinity. Simply put, there is zero intellectual worth in learning about a creation myth if you know about evolution, whereas learning Newtonian gravitonics can still be useful in everyday life even if you can do calculation in relativistic terms.
J: I hear you.
A: Somehow, I doubt that, but I love you anyway.
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