Discovery Commissions Zogby Poll — Design Trumps Darwin
| June 30, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
[[Discovery Press Release:]]
In Darwin Anniversary Year, New Zogby Poll Reveals Majority Support for Intelligent Design — Doubts about Darwin Continue to Mount
Seattle – Just a few months before the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a newly released Zogby poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly rejects Darwinian theory in favor of intelligent design. When asked if life developed “through an unguided process of random mutations and natural selection,” a standard definition of Darwinism, only 33 percent of respondents said they agreed with the statement. But 52 percent agreed that “the development of life was guided by intelligent design.”
“In the Year of Darwin, these figures must represent a terrible disappointment to Darwinian advocates,” commented Stephen C. Meyer, Ph.D., director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, which commissioned the poll. “Darwin’s greatest accomplishment was supposed to be the refutation of intelligent design, yet more than a century later the public has grown increasingly disenchanted with Darwin’s claims.”
Dr. Meyer is the author of a new book from HarperOne, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. He suggested the polling data may reflect a growing awareness of recent scientific developments, documented in his book. As word seeps out from the scientific community, confidence in Darwinism has begun to perceptibly erode:
“It’s only in the past decade that the information age has finally come to biology. We now know that biology at its root is digital code. Having advanced to this level of digital technology ourselves, in computer science, we can at last begin to appreciate what is going on inside the cell: the nested coding, digital processing, distributive retrieval and storage systems, the whole operating system in the genome. The cell is doing the same thing a computer’s operating system does, but with far, far greater efficiency.”
Dr. Meyer said it was no coincidence that the public remained fixed in its skepticism of standard evolutionary theories as scientists learned more about the enigma of DNA and its origins: “Undirected evolutionary processes cannot explain what science is revealing. Intelligent design can. Americans are catching onto this.”
Zogby International conducted the omnibus telephone survey of 1,053 likely voters earlier this year, which marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth as well as the anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species. The margin of error for the poll is +/- 3.1 percentage points.
35 Responses to Discovery Commissions Zogby Poll — Design Trumps Darwin
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Nnoell,
“They propose that individuals can change random events. Very interesting, dont knock it until you read the experiments they have done/doing.”
I took a look at their website. Looks kindof religious to me.
UBP,
I like your question. IOW, begging the question does not a science make.
Nnoel,
The theory of evolution cannot even muster a testable hypothesis.
And a recent peer-reviewed paper that tried to refute Dr Behe pretty much squashed the theory.
That no one even seemed to notice tells me that the ToE is more dogmatic than Catholicism.
Somebody correct me if you feel I’m wrong, but I am uncomfortable with the way th question was formulated in the poll and I’m not sure if it translates to people believing in Intelligent Design as we see it.
It’s the combination of wording and interpretation. “unguided” and “guided” are hot-button words, and they don’t define them. They claim that they’re using “a standard definition of Darwinism,” but my quick search doesn’t show one with the word “unguided” in it.
What’s it there for, if not to influence people’s responses?
And then they lowercase “intelligent design” and don’t define that, either.
Do they mean the specific version of “intelligent design,” in which the designer creates structures and systems from scratch that could not develop naturally; or do they mean some vague version of “intelligent design” in which there’s an intelligence behind it all somewhere–a version that pretty much incorporates any concept of God the responder might have?
Not to mention that they ask about “development of life” without defining that. Do they mean the development of life from non-life, or the development of life after that?
So they’ve asked vague, ill-defined questions containing hot-button terms that set up a false dichotomy and then trumpet the results as showing that “the American public overwhelmingly rejects Darwinian theory.” What if you’re a classic believer in theistic evolution–if you believe that God created a universe that, in accord with His intentions, produced mankind through entirely natural processes?
Which answer should you choose? If you choose the second because you don’t like the term “unguided” and because you don’t realize the hidden meaning of “intelligent design,” the DI will lump you in with those who “reject Darwinism,” even though that’s a total distortion of your point of view.
It seems like the DI “intelligently designed” this poll to get a certain result, got it, and overstate its significance.
But I’m willing to be corrected if you disagree.
SingleBlueSilver:
This is on the face inaccurate considering that not all scientists are Darwinists and not all Darwinists are scientists.
A microbiologist does not use Darwinism to research a chemical pathway in a cell. He may use it to choose what to research, but this is not the same as the research itself. And he may explain his findings based on Darwinism afterward, but the research did not need that explanation.
This is especially true considering how often Darwinism fails to predict the findings.
Therefore, Darwinism does little more than what you just agreed to. It provides explanation, not evidence.