Level of support for evolution
The level of support for evolution among scientists, the public, and other groups is a topic that frequently arises in the creation–evolution controversy, and touches on educational, religious, philosophical, scientific, and political issues.
[23][24][25] Additionally, the scientific community considers intelligent design, a neo-creationist offshoot, to be unscientific,[26] pseudoscience,[27][28] or junk science.
[31] In September 2005, 38 Nobel laureates issued a statement saying "Intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent.
was signed by Nobel Prize Winner Linus Pauling, Isaac Asimov, George G. Simpson, Caltech Biology Professor Norman H. Horowitz, Ernst Mayr, and others, and published in 1977.
[52] This prompted the National Center for Science Education to produce a "light-hearted" petition called "Project Steve" in support of evolution.
[66] Michael Shermer argued in Scientific American in October 2006 that evolution supports concepts like family values, avoiding lies, fidelity, moral codes and the rule of law.
Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Fourth Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has stated in his magnum opus Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth that evolution did occur but only through God being the One who brings it about.
No, they grow and develop gradually and attain the limit of perfection[70]The 1950 encyclical Humani generis advocated scepticism towards evolution without explicitly rejecting it; this was substantially amended by Pope John-Paul II in 1996 in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in which he said, "Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.
In 2005, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna appeared to endorse intelligent design when he denounced philosophically materialist interpretations of evolution.
"[74] In the January 16–17 2006 edition of the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, University of Bologna evolutionary biology Professor Fiorenzo Facchini wrote an article agreeing with the judge's ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover and stating that intelligent design was unscientific.
Furthermore, the name that is used by Sikhs for God, Waheguru, is literally translated as "the Wonderful Teacher",[78] implying that these laws are, in principle at least, at least partially discernible by human inquiry.
[80] The concepts of Dashavatara—different incarnations of God starting from simple organisms and progressively becoming complex beings—and Day and Night of Brahma are generally cited as instances of Hindu acceptance of evolution.
[citation needed] In the United States, many Protestant denominations promote creationism, preach against evolution, and sponsor lectures and debates on the subject.
In Kansas, there has been some widespread concern in the corporate and academic communities that a move to weaken the teaching of evolution in schools will hurt the state's ability to recruit the best talent, particularly in the biotech industry.
[98] James McCarter of Divergence Incorporated stated that the work of 2001 Nobel Prize winner Leland Hartwell relied heavily on the use of evolutionary knowledge and predictions, both of which have significant implications for the treatment of cancers.
[102][103] In some countries, creationist beliefs (or a lack of support for evolutionary theory) are relatively widespread, even garnering a majority of public opinion.
[112] In the same 2009 survey carried among 10 major nations, the highest proportion that agreed that evolutionary theories alone should be taught in schools was in India, at 49%.
[118][119] A 2009 survey conducted by the McGill researchers and their international collaborators found that 85% of Indonesian high school students agreed with the statement, "Millions of fossils show that life has existed for billions of years and changed over time.
[123] A 2009 survey conducted by the McGill researchers and their international collaborators found that 86% of Pakistani high school students agreed with the statement, "Millions of fossils show that life has existed for billions of years and changed over time.
[124] A 2006 United Kingdom poll on the "origin and development of life" asked participants to choose between three different explanations for the origin of life: 22% chose (Young Earth) creationism, 17% opted for intelligent design ("certain features of living things are best explained by the intervention of a supernatural being, e.g. God"), 48% selected evolution theory (with a divine role explicitly excluded) and the rest did not know.
[134] A 2005 Pew Research Center poll found that 70% of evangelical Christians believed that living organisms have not changed since their creation, but only 31% of Catholics and 32% of mainline Protestants shared this opinion.
[143] Here is a list of important court cases in which creationists have suffered setbacks: The level of assent that evolution garners has changed with time.
It had reached such extremes, that by 1880, one American religious weekly publication estimated that "perhaps a quarter, perhaps a half of the educated ministers in our leading Evangelical denominations" thought "that the story of the creation and fall of man, told in Genesis, is no more the record of actual occurrences than is the parable of the Prodigal Son.
Even fervent anti-evolutionist Scopes Trial prosecutor William Jennings Bryan interpreted the "days" of Genesis as ages of the Earth, and acknowledged that biochemical evolution took place, drawing the line only at the story of Adam and Eve's creation.
Prominent pre-World War II creationist Harry Rimmer allowed an Old Earth by slipping millions of years into putative gaps in the Genesis account, and claimed that the Noachian Flood was only a local phenomenon.
[154][dead link] In a 1991 Gallup poll, 47% of the US population, and 25% of college graduates agreed with the statement, "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."
Fourteen years later, in 2005, Gallup found that 53% of Americans expressed the belief that "God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it."
One report in 2006 stated that UK students are increasingly arriving ill-prepared to participate in medical studies or other advanced education.
Studies have yielded inconsistent results, explains associate professor of education at Ohio State University, David Haury.
Haury believes that teachers need to show students that their intuitive feelings may be misleading (for example, using the Wason selection task), and thus to exercise caution when relying on them as they judge the rational merits of ideas.
