David Perks wrote:
> Ian Russell said:
>
> "Militant creationist propaganda has had more influence than you might
> think. A high percentage of non-religious people, including well-educated
> people, have unwittingly absorbed a feeling that evolution by natural
> selection, for example, is "just a theory" on a par with a whole zoo of
> alternative theories. I also sense a very real uneasiness about human
> evolution among non-religious people: a suspicion that it is somehow a
> threat to morality and human dignity. We can't dismiss the issue lightly."
>
> The reason for the openness of people to scepticism is the weakness of the
> case put for science in this case evoultionary theory. Cultural relativism
> dominates the current intellectual climate and unsurprisingly science has
> been attacked as being culturally specific and hence one of many truths.
> This coupled with a lack of direction in society politically has amplified
> the call for a moral dimension to science - the qualification of the
> scientific outlook.
A Europe-wide survey from 1992 that asked whether respondents agreed that
"human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of
animals" found that disagreement was associated with being older and less
educated. As regards religion, it appears that being Protestant or Catholic had
no influence; however, there were relatively lower levels of agreement (44%)
amongst Orthodox respondents. Overall, 65% of the sample agreed with the
statement in 1992, while 17% said they were not sure.
While one cannot rule out the possibility that "cultural relativism" may be
having an impact, if the supposedly culturally relativist contemporary
intellectual climate was a major cause of rejection of evolutionary ideas, I
would have expected the young and better educated to be disproportionately
represented amongst the rejecters. The above survey suggests precisely the
opposite. I suspect that although relativism may be selectively and
strategically deployed by the rejecters of evolution, the main roots of
disquiet about evolution lie in cultural traditionalism.
Wayne Spencer
Source: INRA (Europe) and Report International. (1993). 'Europeans, Science and
Technology - Public Understanding and Attitudes'. Brussels: European
Commission.
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