Science and religion (or rather, science and Christianity) has been repeatedly portrayed and seen as antagonistic towards each other in popular American culture. For the vast majority that are unable to do the math, look at all the fossil records (whether of animals or starlight), and engage in all the relevant philosophical discussions, all they can do is see from the sidelines what is the distribution of public opinion, learn about the most basic arguments, and hopefully sound respectable when they present (or even suddenly change) their views midway from one social setting to another. As a matter of integrity and good witness, it is better if we have an honest assessment of views and acknowledge our current understanding of things, our personal limitations on understanding all the views. This honesty will actually drive us to learn better and more, as we stop ourselves from deceiving ourselves and others regarding how much we actually know and can say. This careful attitude is not only good and appropriate for us as individuals, but should be extended to the entire scientific community as a whole. Even with all the collective evidence and philosophies and discussions so far, we should ask ourselves: do we make a correct assessment of science, and can we identify where science ends and religions/anti-religious worldviews creep in?

According to a poll by Gallup, the percentage of all Americans (regardless of religion) who believe in evolution without God rose to 24% as of 2024. The percentage of Americans who believed in evolution happened under God stayed at roughly 34%, while the percentage who believed that God created man without evolution dropped slightly to 37%. This means that 58% of Americans believe in evolution. I used the word “believe,” because there are still many problems in evolution, including saltation (sudden “jumps” in fossil records), the lack of evidence for abiogenesis (life from non-life), the low probabilities of producing new functioning alleles, so the hypothesis of evolution is far from the certainty that many other theories enjoy. But evolutionists will be reluctant to expose their own flaws, or will only admit that one must have faith that those difficulties will be solved one day. In the meantime, they will be active in rejecting any theory that hints at a God instead of minding their own business. They are not content with teaching evolution along with the other theories in the market, neither with not teaching any of the theories, but want evolution to be taught exclusively. That is why evolution is still a majorly controversial issue. It has disproportionately more support than other theories with the same number of difficulties and evidences. This is because other factors outside of one’s scientific understanding influence whether one accepts evolution far before one understands it. One’s reputation, salary, research funding, preference of whether there is a God (before considering any evidence) all influence one’s willingness to believe in evolution or God or any other theory in a very real way.

Evolutionary scientists operate that way, but they will also deny (at least publicly) that they operate that way. Diving into both books that talk about evolution and those that talk about creation will reveal that there are many private conversations in which an evolutionist admits that accepting Intelligent Design, however much they find it reasonable, will damage their careers. Some writers just admit that they don’t think the existence of a God would be convenient or desirable to them, and will share the real reason they don’t want to believe in God. Scientific preference due to religious preference is very much an open secret. Whether you end up believing it or not, know that you are exerting your faith towards other invisible and unknown things. Don’t pretend you know what you don’t.

Heb. 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible