In addition to being the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, it is also the birth of another man whose ideas continue to shape science today:
Darwin did much to facilitate our understanding of evolution, but he did not do it alone and much has happened since his death.
All that I would recommend on this anniversary is that you read (or reread) evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky’s 1973 essay “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” It makes two important points. One, biology without evolution is a pseudoscience. It would be like trying to identify a pattern in the grains of a sandstorm while denying that the grains had anything to do with one another. Two, evolution is not in conflict with religion and never has been — it is misreading of both evolution and religion that makes it so.
Unfortunately, it’s superstition and pseudoscience that seem to be winning the day:
PRINCETON, NJ — On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they “believe in the theory of evolution,” while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don’t have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity.
There is a strong relationship between education and belief in Darwin’s theory, as might be expected, ranging from 21% of those with high-school educations or less to 74% of those with postgraduate degrees.
Those with high-school educations or less are much more likely to have no opinion than are those who have more formal education. Still, among those with high-school educations or less who have an opinion on Darwin’s theory, more say they do not believe in evolution than say they believe in it. For all other groups, and in particular those who have at least a college degree, belief is significantly higher than nonbelief.
Darwin’s theory has been at the forefront of religious debate since he published On the Origin of Species 150 years ago. Even to this day, highly religious individuals claim that the theory of evolution contradicts the story of creation as outlined in the book of Genesis in the Bible.
Thus, it comes as no surprise to find that there is a strong relationship between church attendance and belief in evolution in the current data. Those who attend church most often are the least likely to say they believe in evolution.
And the news isn’t much better in Darwin’s home country:
Proud though Britain may be for having produced such a famous, pre-eminent, albeit controversial, scientist, Darwin’s theory of evolution is a hard sell here—even though the United Kingdom is a rather secular society where church attendance has fallen to negligible numbers. A January ComRes poll taken for the religious think tank Theos found that 51 percent of Britons say that evolution alone can’t explain complex life, and 32 percent believe that life on Earth began within the past 10,000 years—a basic tenet of creationism.
Of course, polling people about science is really rather silly. It doesn’t matter how many people believe in evolution, gravity, or the Theory of Relativity. They are scientific principles that are either proven or disproven via the scientific method. In the case of evolution, the evidence in favor of it’s general principles is overwhelming and no counter-theory has been able to withstand even basic scientific investigation.
Polls like these do matter, though, to the extent that they reflect a general, troubling, level of willful ignorance of the world.
