Scientists stunned by the public’s doubt of Darwin
The scientific establishment recoiled in horror when a recent poll revealed a majority of Americans doubt the truth of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. The poll by the Associated Press and GfK showed that Americans have more skepticism than confidence in the Big Bang, global warming, the earth’s age, and evolution. The majority was slim—51 percent, not even within the poll’s margin of error—but scientists were crushed to learn there weren’t more true believers in atheistic theories.
But they shouldn’t be so surprised, said Stephen Meyer, the director of the Center for Science and Culture at The Discovery Institute.
“They tend to be skeptical about … theories that are about events that are in the remote past, which are essentially historical in character and which cannot be verified in the same way that you would verify things in the laboratory,” said Meyer, who has written two books making the...