Even in a heightened state of cynicism, this isn’t something I would have guessed. In comments to the Santorum post, Becky Stanek points out that most medical doctors believe that evolution should be taught in schools. That brought me up short — “most”? Shouldn’t it be “essentially all”?
Actually, no. The poll results are, from my perspective, horrifying. Some lowlights:
- 37% of physicians do not agree that the theory of evolution is more correct than intelligent design.
- More than half of Protestant physicians (54%) agree more with intelligent design than with evolution.
- 35% of those Protestants believe that God created humans in their present form.
- Half of all doctors believe that schools should be allowed to teach intelligent design.
- When asked whether intelligent design has legitimacy as science, an overwhelming majority of Jewish doctors (83%) and half of Catholic doctors (51%) believe that intelligent design is simply “a religiously inspired pseudo- science rather than a legitimate scientific speculation,” while more than half of Protestant doctors (63%) believe that intelligent design is a “legitimate scientific speculation.”
Don’t doctors have to, you know, go to college? I could imagine noise at the 10% level, but this kind of widespread superstition among purportedly educated people is appalling. What is going on?
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51 responses to “Only Jewish doctors for me, please”
[…] In the discussion about the post on doctors below, some commenters pointed out that doctors aren’t really scientists at all. But the point was never that doctors are scientists; it was simply that they were people who went to college, where presumably they even took some biology courses. How is it possible for people to go through college and come out not appreciating enough about how science works that they can’t appreciate the metaphysical distinction between science and propaganda? […]