It sounds startling. Nearly 30 per cent of adults in the UK say evolution can’t explain the origin of humans. That rises to nearly 50 per cent for human consciousness. Does that mean we’re increasingly following a vocal minority in the US who deny the science on fringe religious grounds?
When we think about doubts over evolutionary science, we tend to think of the highly politicised views of young Earth creationists in the US. However, our new research suggests that rejection of, or uncertainty about, evolutionary science in the UK isn’t a simple case of religion versus science.
As part of a three-year research project, we surveyed thousands of adults with polling company YouGov to try to better understand attitudes toward evolutionary science and how this might relate to religious identity. The findings were a surprise.
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Although 84 per cent of people agreed that “evolution is a natural process that explains how all organisms, including humans, have developed and continue to develop”, 28 per cent felt that evolutionary science cannot explain the origins of humans.
Unexpectedly, 44 per cent felt that evolutionary processes cannot explain the existence of human consciousness. It might be tempting to assume that this is just a reflection of the number of religious believers. However, while faith does appear to amplify individual doubts about evolutionary explanations, it is not the only factor at work. We saw similar trends across all respondents – religious, spiritual and non-religious.
Nearly one in five self-identifying atheists agreed that “evolutionary processes cannot explain the existence of human consciousness”. And more than one in 10 agreed with the statement: “Animals evolve over time but evolutionary science cannot explain the origins of human beings.”
These findings might seem worrying. But it’s important to note that a strong overall majority – including those who identified as religious or spiritual – accepted evolutionary or theistic evolutionary accounts of the origin of species, including humans.
The number endorsing the creationist option was also lower than in previous surveys. Only 9.1 per cent agreed that “humans and other living things were created by God and have always existed in their current form”. That’s far fewer than in the US,.
Even more encouragingly, 44 per cent of UK adults felt that evolutionary science is important in their daily life to their sense of who they are and how they view the world, while only about a quarter felt it unimportant. So evolutionary science appears to be mostly uncontroversial.
Of course, as a navel-gazing species, we’d expect the most controversial aspect of evolutionary science to be its application to ourselves. We need to recognise, however, that rejection of or uncertainty about aspects of human evolution is not necessarily an issue of religion versus science.
Instead we must acknowledge that universal questions and worries around what it is to be human, and the human experience, are felt by those of all faiths and none.
Read more: The new science of religion; Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions
