This morning Mark Maynard has a good post over here about selling evolution. The question that scares me is which human development fork is the evoulationary dead end? Is it the faith-based unintelligent designers or the reality based community? A recent poll by CBS news shows the majority of Americans reject evolution:
It appears that the rational person is headed for extinction at least in the United States. On the other hand, looking at the bigger picture of what is happening in the US economy and the US place in the world, maybe a more accurate assessment would be that the US as a whole or at least as a powerful country is the evolutionary dead end. Clearly with the religous right and corporate America continually pushing for the dumbing down of Americans at every turn, America will quickly turn into a third world country with a third world standard of living. Unless we make some radical changes in the direction that this country is going and quickly, America’s best days are behind it!
Actually, you should note that this poll does not demonstrate that most do not believe in evolution; it’s just that they don’t believe in _human_ evolution. I suppose you could insist that “evolution” necessarily applies to all living organisms, but surely believeing in 99% of evolution is different than believing in 0% of evolution?
Also note that the percentage of Democrats and Republicans who believe humans were created in our current form is equal…this seems to be a strike against the claim that resistance to scientific concepts finds its origins in the religious right.
Also note that for all adults, the percentage who _do_ believe in evolution (whether guided by God or not) is equal to the percentage who don’t (49% vs. 51%–and the margin of error is 4%, so for all we know the real percentages may be reversed.)
The poll does go to show, I would say, that more work needs to be done convincing people that human evolution need not conflict with religious beliefs. But I don’t know if that’s something that science can achieve by itself…