Creationist Nation

The April 2011 edition of Australasian Sciencereports on a survey showing that the majority of Australian adults reject evolution in favour of some form of creationism, either outright special creation or evolution guided by God.

I don’t think it is quite as bad as it seems, as the survey was not random and there is evidence (the high proportion of Christian respondents who are keen Christians) of creationist activism skewing the survey.

But even discounting that, the proportion of Australian adults who reject natural evolution is disappointing, given that evolution is one of the most well proven principles in science – proven, indeed, beyond any reasonable doubt. So why is it so widely doubted? Part of the reason is the ongoing confusion sown by creationists and their marginally modified descendants, the “Intelligent Design” crowd, whose appalling distortions of science (let alone facts and logic) have to be seen to be believed. If you have fallen prey to any of these charlatans, all I can suggest is: look up the primary literature they quote. You will find, like I did, that nearly all of it is misquoted or misunderstood.

But another part is an understandable fear, reflected in the Australasian Science article, of what a purely naturalistic view of evolution might mean for human dignity, meaning and morality. Questions like this are addressed by a number of authors in  The Australian Book of Atheism, including my own chapter Good Without God .

So we need two things to help protect our children, not to mention honestly questioning adults, from creationist claptrap: clear scientific exposition of why we know evolution is true, coupled with refutation of creationist claims (available in many good books on the topic); and a recognition of the importance of values and morality in human life: coupled with the knowledge that these are best derived from secular, not religious origins.