“Do you believe in evolution?” This has to be one of the most annoying questions about evolution out there. To see why, have a look at this 1hr talk by Josh Roseneau about what Miss USA can teach us about evolution. For the meaty part, see below where he plays a compilation of every single contestant answering whether they believe evolution should be taught in schools:
There were a handful of decent answers. But the vast majority of contestants framed belief in evolution as if it were a personal choice. It’s as if you go to the supermarket and there’s a shelf with packets of evolution and packets of creationism and you can just pick one to your satisfaction: Coke or Pepsi? (To be fair, perhaps that type of answer might have been the best strategy for winning Miss USA so it’s not an indictment on the contestants.)
This would be similar to other questions like “do you believe in qi/god/global warming/the safety of GMOs?” The first annoyance is of course to frame it as a belief, making it more like a personal preference rather than something based on evidence. The second is to turn it into almost a consumer item. The third is that this almost assumes that these beliefs should be and are picked because of what they can do for us: “Do you choose to believe in evolution, or does creationism tend to fulfil your needs better?”
But the biggest problem I find isn’t the “believe” or even the “choose to believe” but the inclusion of “you” in the first place. This frames us as being the pivotal points of the controversial issue at hand, when we’re really not. This then makes it a lot easier to get into personality analysis: what is it about you that caused you to make this belief choice. As an example, I was discussing qi and the fact that I didn’t “believe in qi” suddenly made it about me. Whereas I didn’t ask to be part of this, I’m more interested in the lack of evidence for qi as a genuine (non-metaphorical) thing.
One way that’s been suggested to stop framing belief as personal choice is to say something like “I accept evolution”. This is a little better, but it still makes it about us. “The scientific community accepts evolution” — that’s a bit better but long-winded. It might work for other cases. For example, saying that I believe that GMOs are safe wouldn’t have much weight, but if I said that in academia there is broad consensus on safety, perhaps that might be more effective.
Maybe one way to get rid of belief-talk is simply to say “do you think that X?” For instance, “I think that evolution happened”. This sounds similar but doesn’t seem to have the same connotation as belief, maybe because thinking something highlights the actual process and not the fact that The Consumer Has Chosen. And then we can get to the actual content, which is where things should be.
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