What I believe the surveys I posted show (of about 1,000 people) is that most people have never given these questions serious thought.

Here's a summary of polls on aliens.

The origin of species is not something that occupies the average American mind when they've got other things to think about. Like much of what we learn as kids in school, evolutionary science gets filed away with other subjects that turned out not to have much use in their careers.

I suspect if you broadened the questions a bit ("how old is the Earth? 10,000 years? 100,000? A million? A billion? 4.5 billion?" you'd get answers all across the board. It would have also been interesting to plug "I don't really know or care" into the mix and see what they got. All polls should have that as a possible answer.

The average moderately-religious person who doesn't think much about these things usually settles on some very vague concept of God working through millions of years (close to option one in the survey). Then they shove it under their mental bed and leave it to collect dust bunnies. An amazing number of other beliefs in the average person's life are under there with it.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but it's a hell of a lot easier.

One of the things that makes me the skunk at this picnic is that I try to make people examine stuff.

Incidentally, the book in the article has been out of print for years.