Follow-up
I've read a little bit more about that "how many people believe in evolution" poll.
A key sentence from the Telegraph article:
"The findings - to be published tomorrow in a report by Theos, a theology think-tank - follow a row over the place of creationism in education. "
The fact that these results are published by a theology think tank made me want to look at their methodology a little more closely, so I found the actual report, available here and an interesting read for anyone with time on their hands.
The discussion of the survey data begins on page 30, under "Research in the UK". I think this sentence bears repetition:
"The results were complex, bearing out the hypothesis that people’s opinions in this matter
are not necessarily well-formed or coherent. Many people simply have not thought in any
depth about Darwinian evolution, still less Intelligent Design and, accordingly, they
articulate opinions that appear to be inconsistent or ill-thought-through."
The actual data appear to confirm that Young Earth Creationists comprise about a tenth of the population and that a further 10-15% are (broadly speaking) Intelligent Design believers. The most striking finding for me, though, is this:
"Just over a third of respondents (37%) agreed that “humans evolved by a
process of evolution which removes any need for God”, and just under a third (28%) that
“humans evolved by a process of evolution which can be seen as part of
God’s plan.”"
The difference between these two viewpoints seems to me to be whether or not the questioned person believes in God; obviously, an atheist would be unlikely to claim that evolution "could be seen as part of God's plan", and a Christian would see evolution, and everything else, for that matter, as being a part of God's plan as well.
On the other side of the fence, there were some questions about whether evolution was "proven" or not. 36% of correspondents said that they thought "Darwinian theory is still waiting to be proved or disproved." That's a lot of people. It also betrays a lack of understanding of the scientific method. All scientific theories are "waiting to be disproved". There's no point at which they get stamped as "Immutable Knowledge" and get engraved on a slab; Newtonian mechanics sat around for 250 years before Einstein got the Tipp-ex out. So I think this strongly supports the opening health warning; that people, in general, have pretty incoherent ideas on the subject of "what is science".
And this incoherence is, I think, the real enemy that this report has identified. I'm not at all convinced that the UK is a secret hotbed of religious extremists; rather that the UK is full of people who don't really know what science is. I am reminded of a speech that Tony Blair gave 9 or 10 years ago, in which he repeatedly stated that "Science is about facts". That is a load of old baloney. Science is a process, not a body of knowledge. That is important, and should be taught to every schoolchild as the centrepiece of their scientific curriculum, because there is a widespread belief that science is a similar subject to, say, digital rights management, or Britain's relationship with the European Union. It really isn't.
When people are presented with what "scientists say", they react in a similar way to if they'd been told that "the Labour party say" or "Greenpeace say"; they think "here's another group with an axe to grind, pushing their own interests". That's not the way to think about it; the "scientific community" does not really have any common cause to push (on the contrary, they often have fiercely divergent interests in the area of, for instance, who should get more grant!). The only common ground that scientists share is data and (sometimes) the interpretation of that data. When scientists agree over something (as is the case when a paper goes through the peer review process and gets published), that means that the issue has been scrutinised by the rest of the community, by the best brains in the field, each one with a massive vested interest in one-upping the other and pointing out an error, and no such errors have been found.
And it's that process ("bending over backwards to prove yourself wrong" is how Richard Feynman put it) that is what makes it science. So the normal tools of scepticism that we apply to what we read in the paper (the old "there must be something more to it than that") are not particularly appropriate to apply to science.
These "normal tools of scepticism" can be seen to be very active in the participants in the Theos study; when asked "do you think that evolution alone is enough to explain the complexity of living creatures without the intervention of an intelligence", one's natural inclination is surely to say "no". It's a leading question; the key word is "alone".The question is easy to interpret as "do you believe in only A, or do you think that B is a possibility as well; faced with such a question, I'd always be open to more possibilities, but it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm a proponent of intelligent design.
I've waffled on for bloody ages here, haven't I? Err, better put the above under a cut.
My points in brief:
A key sentence from the Telegraph article:
"The findings - to be published tomorrow in a report by Theos, a theology think-tank - follow a row over the place of creationism in education. "
The fact that these results are published by a theology think tank made me want to look at their methodology a little more closely, so I found the actual report, available here and an interesting read for anyone with time on their hands.
The discussion of the survey data begins on page 30, under "Research in the UK". I think this sentence bears repetition:
"The results were complex, bearing out the hypothesis that people’s opinions in this matter
are not necessarily well-formed or coherent. Many people simply have not thought in any
depth about Darwinian evolution, still less Intelligent Design and, accordingly, they
articulate opinions that appear to be inconsistent or ill-thought-through."
The actual data appear to confirm that Young Earth Creationists comprise about a tenth of the population and that a further 10-15% are (broadly speaking) Intelligent Design believers. The most striking finding for me, though, is this:
"Just over a third of respondents (37%) agreed that “humans evolved by a
process of evolution which removes any need for God”, and just under a third (28%) that
“humans evolved by a process of evolution which can be seen as part of
God’s plan.”"
The difference between these two viewpoints seems to me to be whether or not the questioned person believes in God; obviously, an atheist would be unlikely to claim that evolution "could be seen as part of God's plan", and a Christian would see evolution, and everything else, for that matter, as being a part of God's plan as well.
On the other side of the fence, there were some questions about whether evolution was "proven" or not. 36% of correspondents said that they thought "Darwinian theory is still waiting to be proved or disproved." That's a lot of people. It also betrays a lack of understanding of the scientific method. All scientific theories are "waiting to be disproved". There's no point at which they get stamped as "Immutable Knowledge" and get engraved on a slab; Newtonian mechanics sat around for 250 years before Einstein got the Tipp-ex out. So I think this strongly supports the opening health warning; that people, in general, have pretty incoherent ideas on the subject of "what is science".
And this incoherence is, I think, the real enemy that this report has identified. I'm not at all convinced that the UK is a secret hotbed of religious extremists; rather that the UK is full of people who don't really know what science is. I am reminded of a speech that Tony Blair gave 9 or 10 years ago, in which he repeatedly stated that "Science is about facts". That is a load of old baloney. Science is a process, not a body of knowledge. That is important, and should be taught to every schoolchild as the centrepiece of their scientific curriculum, because there is a widespread belief that science is a similar subject to, say, digital rights management, or Britain's relationship with the European Union. It really isn't.
When people are presented with what "scientists say", they react in a similar way to if they'd been told that "the Labour party say" or "Greenpeace say"; they think "here's another group with an axe to grind, pushing their own interests". That's not the way to think about it; the "scientific community" does not really have any common cause to push (on the contrary, they often have fiercely divergent interests in the area of, for instance, who should get more grant!). The only common ground that scientists share is data and (sometimes) the interpretation of that data. When scientists agree over something (as is the case when a paper goes through the peer review process and gets published), that means that the issue has been scrutinised by the rest of the community, by the best brains in the field, each one with a massive vested interest in one-upping the other and pointing out an error, and no such errors have been found.
And it's that process ("bending over backwards to prove yourself wrong" is how Richard Feynman put it) that is what makes it science. So the normal tools of scepticism that we apply to what we read in the paper (the old "there must be something more to it than that") are not particularly appropriate to apply to science.
These "normal tools of scepticism" can be seen to be very active in the participants in the Theos study; when asked "do you think that evolution alone is enough to explain the complexity of living creatures without the intervention of an intelligence", one's natural inclination is surely to say "no". It's a leading question; the key word is "alone".The question is easy to interpret as "do you believe in only A, or do you think that B is a possibility as well; faced with such a question, I'd always be open to more possibilities, but it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm a proponent of intelligent design.
I've waffled on for bloody ages here, haven't I? Err, better put the above under a cut.
My points in brief:
- The data are very interesting, and far more complex than the media reporting would have you believe (no surprise there).
- It seems as if rather more than half (more like two thirds) believe in evolution.
- A lot of people (many of whom must have also said that they believe in evolution, just from the way the numbers pan out) are open to the idea that there may be "something more" than evolution.
- The above opinion is, in my opinion, reflective of a poor level of understanding of what science is, rather than genuine opposition to evolution as a theory.