Recent surveys report that approximately 50% of US residents reject evolution altogether, with 42% agreeing that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time”. In contrast, in Germany and England, the statistic is about 20%.

If there were no scientific consensus on evolution these figures would make sense. Or if it were like the global warming situation, in which the scientific community has only in the last couple decades come to consensus on the basics, that global temperature is rising and probably caused by rising atmospheric CO₂, and a few scientists are still not sure that human factors are more important than non-human ones, confusion among the general populace would be understandable and forgiveable. However, the scientific consensus on the essentials of evolution and on its timescale, especially, is much stronger and has been established for much longer.

It seems that the Christian Church has been a major catalyst in the scientific illiteracy of the American public, and yet there is no reason for it to have played that role. Throughout the 1800s the theologians that modern evangelicals esteem displayed considerable interest in staying informed of the developments in geology and biology that were pushing back the estimated age of the earth and clarifying the origins of the natural world. Many of the most prominent theologians of the 19th century were Old-Earth creationists, including Benjamin Warfield, the Hodges, and Scofield. James Orr, who, of the authors of the Fundamentals, most addresses the interaction between theology and science, takes a position somewhere between old-Earth creationism and evolutionary creationism. In the last volume of the Fundamentals, geologist, pastor and professor of N.T. Greek G.F. Wright, another pastor named Henry Beach, and a third anonymous author did write strongly anti-Darwinian articles, but Wright nevertheless held old-Earth views, and the other two don’t seem to be well-recognized authors. (The anonymous author was “An Occupant of the Pew” not the more not famous and extremely prolific author named “Anonymous”.) A. H. Strong was an evolutionary creationist, as was C. S. Lewis. The trend continues into the present: Alister McGrath is an evolutionary creationist, Wayne Grudem accepts either YEC or OEC, as does J.P. Moreland (ibid). R.C. Sproul’s comments on Creation and Time and the book he has written on the subject seem to indicate he is an old-Earth creationist. J.I. Packer sees to no problem with full biological evolution. (There are exceptions, of course. Norman Geisler, for example, is young-Earth[see comment below], and at least early on, Carl F.H. Henry was a young-Earth creationist.) Similarly, the most prominent people in the Intelligent Design camp are overwhelmingly Old Earth Creationists: out of Michael Behe, William Dembski, Dean Kenyon, Phillip Johnson, Stephen Meyer, and Paul Nelson, only Nelson believes in a young Earth, and at least Behe also accepts common descent. All of these people might object to evolution in (1) its claim that speciation occurs without divine intervention, and all but the evolutionary creationists might object to (2) its claim that humans are descended from non-human apes. They do not dispute that (1) the earth is billions of years old and the universe is even older, and (2) mutation and competition do play an important role in shaping the diversity of the biological world.

In contrast, the ’science’ taught on Christian radio, and regularly given stage time in sunday schools and bible studies essentially teaches that evolutionary biology is a giant hoax: that the bible clearly teaches that the Earth is 6000 years old, created ex nihilo in a form much like the present, only much nicer, since that was before the Fall and before the Flood. The scientific enterprise is treated like an organized conspiracy set on destroying Christianity, or even all morality.

There is widespread consensus even among conservative theologians and evangelical scientists that young Earth creationism is false and that natural science informs sound belief rather than destroys it, and yet lay Christians are taught a creation myth as if it were literal history, and are taught to distrust science altogether. The result is an American Church that is scientifically illiterate — unable and unwilling to consider scientific data in the formulation of public policy — and taught a strawman as if it were foundational doctrine. This is unexcusable, with serious consequences both for the American Church and for the nation as a whole.