According to Newsweek in 1987, "By one count there are some 700
scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S.
earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science..."
The above is quoted from Public Beliefs About Evolution And Creation at ReligiousTolerance.org. which in turn referenced Newsweek magazine, 1987-JUN-29, Page 23 as the source for this data.
700 U.S. earth or life scientists who accept creationism / 480,000 U.S. earth or life scientists X 100%
= 0.15% of U.S. earth or life scientists that accept creationism.
I
think this is a good statistic to give some kind of an indication of just how
far out of the mainstream creationists are. It's a good rebuttal to the lists
of Creation Scientists that are trotted out from time to time by creationists
to give the impression that there is something other than a miniscule fraction
of scientists that share their beliefs. Project Steve from the National Center for Science Education
is
also a good answer to this (because there are more scientists with names
that are a variation of Steve that accept evolution than there are creation
scientists on any of the lists that I have seen), but I would rather be able
to say that there are about 9985 biologists or geologists who accept evolution
for every 15 biologists or geologists that believe in creationism. Note that
even if the count of creation scientists was off by a factor of 10, an overwhelming
99.85% of biologists and geoligists would still be in the rejecting creationism
category.
I realise that this is not a case
of majority rules, but any reasonable person should be able to see that evolution
(and presumably a multi-billion year age of the earth) is accepted by an
overwhelming majority of the people who know the most about the topic. If
creationists expect any kind of increased acceptance of their beliefs in
the scientific community, they had better start publishing data to support
it in the peer reviewed scientifc journals where it can be evaluated and
discussed by the scientific community.
Or, they could
just present their ideas to the (mostly) science illiterate public and give
up on trying to convince the scientific community. A little thought on this
topic makes it easy to see why creationists have chosen this route (along
with the fact that the scientific community DID evaluate the beliefs of creationism
about 100 years ago (and farther back) and a great majority (apparently 99.85%
of biologists and geologists at the current time) found that creationism was NOT supported
by the evidence).