The Gap Between Societies Beliefs And Scientists Facts

Acceptability of Evolution Theory

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Acceptability of Evolution Theory

In 1895, Charles Darwin presented his groundbreaking theory of evolution named natural selection in his book “the Origin of Species.” The salient peculiarity of this theory revolves around the ability of living beings to adapt and make their survival feasible. Adaptation, in a nutshell, is the ability of individuals to synchronize with the surrounding environment such as humidity, nutrition, weather conditions, temperature and some other factors and ensure their survival.

He argued that individuals that are able enough to adapt their changing environment are more likely to survive and transfer these characteristics to the next generations through genetic process. For example, thousands of years ago, polar bears were furless because they lived in the warm regions; with the passing time, climate change resulted in the alteration of weather from warm to cold. Eventually, bears that responded to the changing environment and developed fur (adaptation) for heat resistance rendered successful in combating the climate change whereas those who failed, simply vanished (Sober et. al., 2016). This favorable adaptation and corresponding genetic transference led the individuals to produce diverse off-springs with the passing time.

This concept was so convincing that many of the biologists assumed evolution all about adaptation that is only partially true. Darwin’s insight suggested that individuals who were having disadvantageous characteristics fell prey to extinction (negative selection) while those who developed favorable traits lived more and passed these traits to their next generations (positive selection). This is what most of the biologists believed, however in 1968, a new perspective came into being known as “neutral theory of molecular selection” presented by Motoo Kimura (Delgado, 2016).

This was the first opposing view of Darwin’s theory stating that evolution is not the result of natural selection rather an appreciable fraction of genetic mutation between or within species is actually the consequence of genetic drift. This is because he supported the “creation” aspect of life rather than evolution one. After this perspective came into light, many other biologists and public having similar stance supported Kimura.

The magnitude of support for evolution theory among public and scientists frequently comes up with the creation-evolution controversy and perpetuates within political, scientific, religious, philosophical and educational issues. Although this theory is taught worldwide yet societies having a general non-acceptance for it attempt to alleviate its credibility. Estimation indicates that around 97% of the scientific community supports evolution as the most credible and dominant “scientific” theory of diversity (Sober et. al., 2016). This is why scientific associations readily refute and rebut the opposing arguments to evolution by public and other intellectual bodies.

There are many underlying reasons behind the non-acceptance of common people for the theory of evolution however all these reasons originate from a single factor named as religion. Religion shapes one’s beliefs; Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists have their own views about the creation of humans. They would prefer their religious beliefs over a personal-perspective-driven theory for obvious reasons. Many survey studies indicate that there are several countries where theory of evolution seems to be less promising and highly conflicting with creationism such as United States, South Africa, Brazil, Philippines, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Korea and Arab countries (Ronald, 2019). On the other hand, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Germany, Italy, Japan, Ireland and United Kingdom have comparatively higher acceptability about this theory (Ronald, 2019).

Needless to say, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism communicate the teachings of creation only by God not by evolution hence opposing view of prospective countries about this theory makes a great deal of sense. So it can be said that what scientists believe can simply be disregarded by common people if it is contradictive to their religious beliefs—theory of evolution is the best example of this phenomenon.

References

Delgado, C. (2016). Finding evolution in medicine. NIH Record. 58 (15). Archived from the OriginON.

Ronald, N. L. (2019). Galileo goes to jail: and other myths about science and religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 221–223.

Sober, E., Attie, A. D., Numbers, R. L., et al. (2016). Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action. J Clin Invest. 116 (5), 1134–8. doi:10.1172/JCI28449