New Poll Finds That Fewer Than One in Three Americans Believe the Darwinist Narrative

 Late last month we had the publication of a large survey by the Survey Center on American Life. The survey polled about 5000 randomly selected adults, using some methodology so that the characteristics of the survey participants ended up matching those of the US population.  The poll probes questions such as how much trust the public has in scientists and how much the public believes some of the claims that scientists typically make. A web page announcing the results has the clumsy title "America’s Crisis of Confidence: Rising Mistrust, Conspiracies, and Vaccine Hesitancy After COVID-19."  The authors are not actually trying to suggest a rise in conspiracies, but a rise in belief in conspiracies.  Their data fails to show any such rise in belief in conspiracies. The web page has many graphs showing the poll results, and  only two of the graphs are a line graph showing a trend line over multiple years. Those graphs do not show any rise in belief in conspiracies.

The first few paragraphs of the web page announcing the poll results gives us a "confidence crisis" narrative in which the authors try to make it sound like there is some defect in the public and that scientists are wrongly being distrusted. We have this as the second paragraph:

"For years now, public discourse has been rife with concerns about the status of expertise in our political life. Stretching back decades, but intensifying since the rise of Donald Trump in 2016, a profusion of articles and books have bemoaned what commentators variously describe as an 'attack on science,' the 'death of expertise,' the 'war on science,' or the 'crisis of expertise.'  Many blame the ignorance or irrationality of Americans who ignore or actively oppose the recommendations of scientific, medical, and other technical experts and are increasingly susceptible to conspiracy theories."

This is classic "blame the public" spin in which a decline in confidence in scientific experts is regarded as some defect in the thinking of the public, rather than a rational response to a variety of reasons for lacking confidence in scientists or announcements about their work, reasons that include the following:

• A very strong structural level of overconfidence by scientists who in many fields routinely claim to understand deep mysteries of nature they do not actually understand.
• A very high level of ideological bias among many scientists who adhere to belief dogmas of particular scientific communities, dogmas that are not well established by evidence.
• A very high amount of speculation in quite a few fields of science, which may involve scientists speaking in a matter-of-fact manner about speculative never-observed things such as dark matter, dark energy, primordial cosmic inflation, string theory, neural engrams and the multiverse. 
• An extremely large replication crisis in fields such as social science, psychology, bioscience and neuroscience, in which a very large fraction or most of the results reported in scientific papers fail to be replicated.
• A crisis of bad methods (also called Questionable Research Practices) in some fields of science such as neuroscience, in which experimental studies typically have multiple serious flaws such as a lack of pre-registration, a lack of an effective blinding protocol, the use of way-too-small study group sizes, or the use of unreliable measurement techniques. 
• The deleterious effect of factors such as publication bias (under which journals tend to publish only positive results confirming an effect and not publish results failing to confirm an effect), citation counts and "papers published" counts (in which scientists are judged by the number of citations papers get and how many papers they have published, rather than how well they adhered to sound scientific techniques, which tends to encourage "quick and dirty" experimental methods, and also papers making interesting-sounding claims that may not be matched by any data collected). 
•  The extremely bad effect of an academia-cyberspace profit complex, in which web pages containing ads that generate revenue for the web site owners are strongly incentivized to publish misleading but interesting-sounding descriptions of new scientific research, to produce clickbait that generates more page views and more revenue for those running the web pages, as well as various other profit effects in which hype and misleading announcements are incentivized.
• A seemingly growing tendency for university press releases to make boastful claims about new research not matching any accomplishments of the research, and a seemingly growing tendency for scientific papers to have titles or abstract sentences making claims not established by any data produced by the described study (the latter occurring largely to maximize the eagerly desired paper citations). 
• A strong entanglement of certain types of scientists with various industries such as the pharmaceutical industry ("Big Pharma") and the biotech industry ("Big Biotech"), with the scientists often owning shares in companies whose stock prices can be positively affected by research done by the scientists, a relation that may reasonably be regarded as affecting the objectivity of such scientists.

We hear nothing about such problems in the  web page announcing the results, which seems to be written with an attitude that when the public distrusts scientists or doubts their claims, it's all the public's fault.  But let's ignore the attitude of the writers, and look at some of the interesting data that was produced, some of which is misleadingly described by the authors.  One of the topics probed was what the public believes about human origins, and whether the public believes typical biologist claims about human origins. 

The first thing we hear about this is a paragraph that uses the extremely shady tactic of asking people whether humans "evolved over time."  The dubious use of such a question (while insinuating that it is a measure of belief in Darwinism) is one of the most disreputable tactics of pollsters trying to create an impression that a majority believe in Darwinism. It is conceded by everyone that gene pools change at least slightly over time, and any change in a gene pool is an example of evolution, according to one of the definitions of evolution.  Even those completely rejecting the idea that human origins can be mainly explained by Darwinian ideas will tend to agree with the statement that "humans evolved over time," because the human gene pool is now different from what it was thousands of years ago.  So asking people whether they agree with the statement that "humans evolved over time" is not a decent way to measure whether people agree with claims that Darwinian ideas explain how we got human beings.  The web page describing the new survey results tells us that 70% of the US agree that "humans evolved over time," but that does not show that even half of Americans agree with Darwinian claims about human origins. 

The web page announcing the results of the new survey then has a misleading section header of "Americans embrace evolution," which does not match the numerical data reported by the survey. This is followed by the web page making an extremely misleading claim about what was produced by its own survey.  This is what the page claims: 

"Most Americans believe that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of the human species, though a significant minority remain doubtful. More than six in 10 (61 percent) Americans agree that 'evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth.'  Thirty-seven percent of the public disagrees."

The paragraph above is a very misleading description of the results of Question H of the survey. The actual results are below:

Evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth
29	Completely agree
32	Somewhat agree
15	Somewhat disagree
22	Completely disagree
2	Refused

It is very misleading for the authors of the survey summary to be describing these results under a header of "Americans embrace evolution," and is very misleading for them to be using these results to make a a claim that "more than six in 10 (61 percent) Americans agree that 'evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth.' " When someone answers that they only "somewhat agree" with a claim, they should never be simply listed as people who "agree" with that claim.  The actual results should have been stated only exactly as they were: 29% completely agreeing and 32% merely somewhat agreeing.  

There follows on the web page a misleading graph that graphs a result that was never actually produced by the survey.  The graph is a visual representation of the incorrect claim by the web page authors that 61% of the respondents "agree that 'evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth.' "  No such result was produced, and the actual result was 29% completely agreeing with that statement and 32% merely somewhat agreeing with that statement.

I may note the bias involved in having a poll state "evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth," and then asking people whether they agree with that statement. Through the power of suggestion, this will tend to produce a higher agreement rate with the statement than a question asking what is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth, and then giving options such as "evolution" and "the agency of some higher power."  Similarly, if your poll makes the statement "argon is a dangerous form of air pollution we should control," and asks how well you agree with this statement, probably at least 30% will agree because of the power of suggestion, even though we all have been breathing an atmosphere that is about 1% argon all our lives. 

A web page tells us that something called "acquiescence bias" causes people to be more likely to state approval of something when they are simply asked whether they agree or disagree with a statement. We read this:

"One of the most common formats used in survey questions is the 'agree-disagree' format. In this type of question, respondents are asked whether they agree or disagree with a particular statement. Research has shown that, compared with the better educated and better informed, less educated and less informed respondents have a greater tendency to agree with such statements. This is sometimes called an 'acquiescence bias' (since some kinds of respondents are more likely to acquiesce to the assertion than are others) .... A better practice is to offer respondents a choice between alternative statements. A Pew Research Center experiment with one of its routinely asked values questions illustrates the difference that question format can make. Not only does the forced choice format yield a very different result overall from the agree-disagree format, but the pattern of answers between respondents with more or less formal education also tends to be very different."

The example given by the page shows how big this the power of suggestion can be.  When asked whether they agree or disagree that "the best way to ensure peace is by military strength," 55% agreed. But when the question was posed in a format allowing choices of either "the best way to ensure peace is by military strength" or "diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace," only 33% chose military strength and 55% chose diplomacy. 

We get a much better idea of what Americans are really thinking on the topic of human origins with a later question of the new survey discussed above. Here is the question as it appears as Question 8 in the survey form, with the percentages choosing particular answers :

Which comes closer to your view?
31	Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process
38	Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes that were guided or allowed by God or a higher power
12	Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time
17	Not sure
1	Refused

Now, you might think that this is a pretty fair question, because it offers several different options. But the truth is that the poll question above is a very poor way to be posing a question about human origins.  There are some very serious problems with the poll question above:

(1) Excluding the answer of "Not sure," the people being polled are given a choice between either embracing (a) the idea that "humans and other living things have evolved over time" as an explanation for their origins, or (b) the idea that "Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."  The poll respondents cannot choose an answer saying that humans appeared for some reason after the beginning of a time, one that does not sound like such an appearance occurred mainly because of Darwinian evolution. 

(2) People believing in the biblical account of human origins have no answer matching their beliefs. The Bible does not say humans existed from the beginning of time, but that humans were created after the heavens and the earth were created. 

(3) There is no answer matching the beliefs of people who believe that the human species was purposefully created. None of the answers refer to a purposeful creation.  The answer referring to humans existing "since the beginning of time" does not seem to match the idea of those who think the human race was deliberately created after the beginning of time. 

(4) There is no answer matching the beliefs of people who believe that the human species arose mainly because of non-evolutionary reasons very much after the beginning of time, such as people who believe that humans arose because of purposeful activity by visiting extraterrestrials.   

(5) Since it does not refer to humans evolving from some lower species, the question does not measure belief in the core Darwinist idea that the human species arose from some lower species or ape-like species. It merely refers instead to humans "evolving over time." Someone believing that humans were divinely created might choose the first answer as his choice, while believing that after a divine creation there occurred a little human evolution that God did not assist. That person's answer would then tend to be counted as support for Darwinism, even though the person rejected the Darwinist belief that humans arose through mere natural processes. 

What we have in Question 8 above is a question that seems designed to try to get as many people as possible to give some answer sounding like an answer voicing support for evolution as an explanation for humans.  It is a poor way to be trying to figure out what people think about human origins. Despite the clear Darwinist slant of the question, in which the cards are stacked in favor of Darwin, the result is a very humbling one for Darwinists. Less than a third of the people answering have agreed with the Darwinist account of human origins, that humans arose merely due to processes such as natural selection.  Only 31% of the respondents have agreed with the claim that "Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process." 

It is remarkable that so few agree with that statement after so many decades of Darwinist control over the educational system, and endless stories in our mainstream press repeating the groundless legend that Darwin's ideas explain the origin of the human species.  The socially constructed triumphal legend that a 19th century biologist with no degree in biology explained the origin of the human species (requiring a million types of just-right microscopic biological complexities he knew nothing about) has been endlessly repeated by the press and our educational systems. But the great majority of the American people still are not buying it. Fewer than one third of them agree with the Darwinist narrative that we arose merely due to processes such as natural selection. 

In its description of its methodology, the recent poll makes no claim to be a secret ballot poll. We are told that people were randomly picked and contacted, but no mention is made of any attempt to inform poll respondents that they were engaging in a secret ballot.  If a secret ballot technique had been used, I strongly suspect that far fewer than 31% would have answered they agreed with the claim that "Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process." In the case of Darwinism we have a situation in which authorities (the educational system and professors) keep trying to give people the idea that a particular belief is the politically correct belief that they are obligated to believe. Many people filling out what they think is not a secret ballot will kind of think that they must "answer as they are supposed to answer," but will answer differently when they are convinced they have a secret ballot and will never be penalized for answering as they believe. The new poll finds that only 6% of the respondents were atheists, and only 7% agnostic. These very low numbers are part of the reason I suspect that if a secret ballot had been done, far fewer than 31% would have answered they agreed with the claim that "Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process."  A properly designed survey question about human origins (not having the defects listed I above) would also have  probably resulted in far fewer than 31% agreeing with the statement above. 

What would a good poll question about human origins look like, one that would not suffer from any of the five problems I listed above? It might look like this (a question not appearing in the recent poll):

Which comes closer to your view? (Mark X in only one box.)
	Humans evolved from some lower species because of natural processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process.
	Humans evolved from some lower species, with this evolution guided or aided by God or a higher power.
	Humans arose mainly because of the action of some causal power or causal agency that scientists don't understand very well.
	Humans arose pretty much or exactly as described by the sacred scriptures I follow.
	Our bodies and minds and behavior are so complex and hard-to-explain that humans do not understand how the human race arose or how human language first arose.
	I don't know.
	I decline to answer.

If you were to give this question in a secret ballot poll to Americans, I think it is very unlikely that even 25% would choose the first answer. Answering another poll question (Question 9C), one asking how well scientists understand "how the human species came to be", only 14% of the respondents in the large new poll answered "very well" rather than some answer indicating less confidence in scientist's knowledge of this topic. 

The new poll tells us that trust in scientists has dropped sharply since the year 2020.  We have a graph telling us that the percentage of Americans having a great deal or some trust in scientists has dropped from about 89% in 2020 to only 69% in 2023. We read that "nearly half of the public (47 percent) agrees that scientific research has become less trustworthy in recent years." 

Anyone studying the degree of  belief in Darwinist tenets might reasonably derive a lesson from this poll and how it was described in the document announcing it: (1) polls trying to measure belief in Darwinist ideas tend to use tricky or vague wording designed to maximize results suggesting belief in Darwinist claims;  (2) the numerical results of such polls are often inaccurately summarized to try to make it sound as if a belief in Darwinist claims is higher than the numerical results suggest. Similarly, tactics of "give us an inch and we'll take a mile" are very heavily used in the literature of Darwinism salesmen, where we constantly see little bits of gene pool change or unimpressive microevolution treated as if such things were justifications for belief in macroevolution, something a trillion times harder such as microbes evolving into mammals or chimp-like creatures evolving into humans.  

There is a credible scientific account for how gene pool change can naturally occur. There is no credible scientific account for how macroevolution involving massive body structure innovation and massive numbers of new protein innovations and new cell types could occur. Two of the very many reasons why the latter does not exist are (1) the sky-high level of organization and functional complexity in biochemistry, proteins and cells, requiring a fine-tuned arrangement of extremely  many parts of the right type, with a multitude of too-hard-to-accidentally-achieve functional thresholds; and (2) the fact that DNA (a mere repository of low-level chemical information) specifies neither the large-scale structure of bodies nor the small-scale structure of cells, contrary to the innumerable misstatements that Darwinists have made about this topic. So there is no conceivable change in DNA or its genes that can explain something such as a transition from dinosaurs to flying birds or a transition from chimp-like organisms to humans. 

The commonly stated idea that there is some consensus among scientists about how the human species originated is one of the very many misleading claims spread about by Darwinism enthusiasts, who often use misleading terms and phrases.  Even polls of scientists slanted to produce results favoring Darwinism (such as the one discussed here) reveal 8% disagreement with the Darwinist explanation, and a well-designed secret ballot poll of scientists would reveal a much higher disagreement. A careful reading of my very long post "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" (which has countless quotes by scientists) will reveal that scientists very often express lack of explanatory confidence about a host of matters relevant to human origins. You might credibly claim to have an understanding of human origins by natural processes only if you had an understanding of many smaller questions, such as how we got human minds, how human memory works, how human thinking and understanding arises, how human language first arose, how we got so many very fine-tuned genes and fine-tuned proteins, how proteins fold into specific 3D shapes needed for their  function, how protein complexes form, how cells reproduce, how a human zygote progresses to become the vastly more organized state of a human body, and so forth.  In my post "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" we hear innumerable scientists confessing or insinuating that they do not understand such things, and do not understand other things such as the origin of life. Publicly scientists love to make insinuations that they are in agreement about human origins. But scattered throughout their books, papers and articles is very much  evidence that no such agreement exists, and that the necessary foundation for credibly claiming confidence about understanding human origins simply has not been laid.

The full list is ten times longer