Yeah, so I woke up from my nap to this article in Newsweek that polled Americans about a variety of things, one of which was evolution. 91% of Americans believe in God, which isn’t terribly surprising, however 34% of college graduates believe in the Biblical account of creation. When asked “‘Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?”, 48% of Americans said no.
As I’m sure my views on this are pretty clear, I won’t go into an extended rant. Let me just say, however, that this is very disturbing. It’s disturbing primarily because 48% of people believe in a lie (yes, the vast majority of credible scientists believe in natural selection) and also that 34% of college graduates believe that women were created when a rib was taken from Adam, and that it’s more likely that we came from mud rather than monkeys. I’ll quote a comment off Slashdot, because I think he said it pretty well:
“America continues to worry about losing its edge in the high-tech industry. But that couldn’t possibly be related to poor science education, could it?
“Note: I’m referring specifically to the 48% who believe that evolution is not well-supported by scientific evidence and that it is not widely accepted within the scientific community. Well, and the people who think the universe is less than 10,000 years old, despite all the evidence to the contrary. You can believe in God and have an understanding of science, just like you can have morals without being religious. But thinking that evolution isn’t supported by evidence, or isn’t widely accepted by scientists, is just plain ignorance.”
Devil’s advocate – do you think these numbers are partially based on misunderstanding? There is a difference between “natural selection” and “man evolved from bacteria based on natural selection”. My guess is that when the average person thinks of evolution, they think of it in terms of creation.
I’ll go a bit further, being a scientifically educated professional without concentration in biology. It is my understanding that creation by evolution is the best current scientific theory, but that it is not “proved” beyond doubt. Some experiments show that the evolution based purely on natural selection would take far longer than the age of Earth to produce humans. Given this uncertainty, plus a strong religious following in the US, is it really surprising that people follow religion? Why do you expect people to have “faith” in part of their questionable religions beliefs (God, Christ, etc) while abandoning others (creation)?
I think, honestly, that this survey is misrepresented, and I truly hope the data they present are skewed. It all depends on how you ask the question for what the answers will be… For example, people could have said that “creationism” equates “intelligent design,” which isn’t true…but the question may not have been worded to specify “creationism” as a separate entity. I believe that 34% of college graduates believe in “intelligent design”…but downright creationism is a bit hard to swallow…
As for the second point, I agree entirely. And I think the comment from Slashdot brings up an important point. If our science education was better, and people understood what the word “theory” actually means, people’s perceptions could be different. Then again, as the comments from Slashdot also mention, as with many issues, all it takes are a few people to scream loud enough, then people start to believe it, thinking that their voice represents the majority when it actually doesn’t. But this presents a fault of science as well: “we” have let this go far too long and never explained things in terms that the general public could understand, leaving other people to “explain” it to them…incorrectly. Hopefully, this will change sooner rather than later.
On both points though, I tend to agree…
If I become a high school teacher, I’ll teach evolution well. Of course, I’ll do it in the most sarcastic voice I can muster, just in hopes that one day one of those kids will meet you and make you frustrated.
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