Firstly, I've googled this a lot and can't find what I'm looking for. Does anyone have any reliable stats to how many scientists don't believe in evolution? I say this because I was talking to my mom before and she started saying "in fact there's an increasing amount of scientists who are starting to not believe in evolution". I had no actual statistics to prove her otherwise, or anyone else that claims the same thing (i.e. people that read the watchtower).

Anyone?

No one who doesn't "believe" in evolution is a scientist. But aside from that tautology, I doubt much data exists. I don't think they do a census. There's not even a clear definition of what constitutes a scientist.

Quote from Zed

No one who doesn't "believe" in evolution is a scientist. But aside from that tautology, I doubt much data exists. I don't think they do a census. There's not even a clear definition of what constitutes a scientist.

Ah I suppose. I guess the watchtower where my mum got this information just likes to make up stats for their own benefit.

Hang on a minute; you're British. We don't have creationists here. What witchcraft is this?

This witchcraft goes by the name of the Jehovah's witnesses.

Also, my mom's really weird. She went to Jehovah's witness (JW) meetings for like a month a few years ago (of which I attended 3), and has 2 JW friends. However, she's not a JW, has never read the bible, agrees with some of what the JW's say, doesn't go to church, believes in god, sometimes reads the watchtower that her JW friends bring her, doesn't believe in evolution and believes things like increasing scientists are disbelieving in it. She asked me to read and respond to an article in a watchtower magazine (the usual intelligent design bullshit, with the eye etc and Paley's watchmaker argument), to which I wrote 2 pages of notes disproving their claims.

I think you'd be surprised how many people aren't necessarily fundamentalist, but disbelieve in evolution etc in the UK, specifically JW's though.

Quote from Zed

No one who doesn't "believe" in evolution is a scientist. But aside from that tautology, I doubt much data exists. I don't think they do a census. There's not even a clear definition of what constitutes a scientist.

im mixing chemicals AND denouncing your theory of evolution and you can't stop me!

Evolution as a process is factually proven. It exists, it happens, it's been experimentally verified, and absolutely no evidence suggests otherwise.

The theory relates to how it occurs, and it's not "proven" because no experiment or discovery can possibly exist as stand-alone proof. It needs to be interpreted as evidence. The overall interpretation of this evidence is one of the most exhaustively confirmed and validated theories in any scientific area of research.


If there are any specific points that she uses as evidence against evolution, post it here, I'd be glad to help show her how ignorant she is.

Also consider this letter, supported and signed by 12,757 Christian clergymen:

"Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts. We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as "one theory among others" is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator."

That's part of it, the rest can be found here.

Also found this:

"The 600 Darwin Dissenters signing the A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism represent about 0.054% of the estimated 1,108,100 biological and geological scientists in the US in 1999. In addition, a large fraction of the Darwin Dissenters have specialties unrelated to research on evolution; of the dissenters, three-quarters are not biologists. Therefore, the roughly 150 biologist Darwin Dissenters represent about 0.0157% of the US biologists that existed in 1999."

A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism isn't even a full rejection of evolution, but just an expression of skepticism.

There was a reaction to this called "Project Steve", where only scientists with the first name Steven, or a variation of it, could sign in support of evolution. Only about 1% of the US population has that name, and it still has over 1,200 signatures, twice as many as A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.