Numbers R L, Stenhouse J
Department of the History of Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
Br J Hist Sci. 2000 Sep;33(118 Pt 3):335-50. doi: 10.1017/s0007087499004045.
Like other English-speaking peoples around the world, New Zealanders began debating Darwinism in the early 1860s, shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Despite the opposition of some religious and political leaders - and even the odd scientist - biological evolution made deep inroads in a culture that increasingly identified itself as secular. The introduction of pro-evolution curricula and radio broadcasts provoked occasional antievolution outbursts, but creationism remained more an object of ridicule than a threat until the last decades of the twentieth century, when first American and then Australian creationists began fomenting antievolutionism among New Zealanders. Although Stephen Jay Gould assured them in 1986 that they had little to fear from so-called scientific creationism, because it was a 'peculiarly American' phenomenon, scientific creationism by the mid-1990s had captured the allegiance of an estimated five per cent of the country and proved especially attractive to Maori and Pacific Islanders. In 1992 New Zealand creationists formed their own antievolution society, Creation Science (NZ).
和世界各地其他说英语的民族一样，在查尔斯·达尔文的《物种起源》出版后不久，新西兰人在19世纪60年代初就开始讨论达尔文主义了。尽管一些宗教和政治领袖——甚至还有个别科学家——表示反对，但生物进化在这个日益认同世俗化的文化中还是取得了重大进展。支持进化论的课程和广播节目的引入偶尔引发了反进化论的爆发，但直到20世纪最后几十年，神创论更多的是被嘲笑的对象而非威胁，当时先是美国的神创论者，接着是澳大利亚的神创论者开始在新西兰人当中煽动反进化论情绪。尽管斯蒂芬·杰伊·古尔德在1986年向他们保证，他们无需担心所谓的科学神创论，因为这是一种“特别美国式”的现象，但到了20世纪90年代中期，科学神创论已经赢得了该国约5%人口的支持，并且对毛利人和太平洋岛民特别有吸引力。1992年，新西兰的神创论者成立了他们自己的反进化论团体——新西兰创造科学协会。
