Who were the participants and with what level of eduction?
I ask because I have come to realise most people simply don’t think about these things the way you and I do. They don’t have a science background or interest particularly and don’t trouble themselves with such questions. They go along with the imam, and watch the odd TV programme about dinosaurs, but simply never join the dots.
I think that a factor with some of these surveys is that people don't want to feel dumb as they talk to the person who is taking the poll. When they asked "What is your opinion on [issue or knowledge area they don't know much about]?" and are give four or five multiple-choice options, the answers the pollsters end up with are, to some extent, just an expression of people's gut feelings on the question in the heat of the moment.
Another factor is politicisation of scientific issues. If you're MAGA and all your friends are MAGA and you all voted for MAGA anti-science candidates in the last election, then chances are good that you've vaguely heard that believing in evolution is anti-MAGA or anti-Republican or anti-Trump. Why break with your in-crowd, especially over a topic you know very little about and which you've heard on the grapevine is an evil conspiracy of some kind? Nah. Far easier to say "I don't buy into any of that pinko communist bullshit science stuff!"
We also have to factor in the religious influences. If your pastor gives the occasional sermon on a Sunday about the dangers of being sucked in by lies spread by devil-worshipping atheist so-called scientists, then in the absence of any better information, chances are good that you're going to go with what the pastor told you when they survey you about your opinions.
Perhaps it’s only people like us, with a religious background and studying science at uni who are thereby forced to work this stuff out.
I don't think the religious background or the formal science education actually matters that much. What makes the difference is whether a person has developed skills in how to think critically about the information they receive (from whatever source). Good educators teach those skills, though mostly people acquire them more by osmosis and being exposed to an educational culture than because of explicit instruction. In my ideal world, there would be more explicit instruction about how to think critically. Of course, there are plenty of people and organisations that have vested interests in
not encouraging the people they profit from to think critically.
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Having said all that, I should add that a lack of knowledge and/or education does not necessarily have to be entirely the fault of the person who lacks those things. It's okay not to know stuff about esoteric subjects like the theory of evolution.
What I find mildly annoying is when people pretend to know stuff they don't know. Probably a lot of that can be put down to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Some people just aren't bright enough to realise that they don't actually know stuff. A lot of those people appeal almost entirely to their own gut feelings and personal experience to decide what is true and what is false. Some are skeptical of experts and distrustful of authority figures, so they develop mental barriers that protect them from ever learning certain truths.
What I find rather more annoying is when people pretend to know stuff they don't know, while simultaneously being fully aware that they don't actually know the stuff. They have the arrogance to try to tell people who obviously
do know the stuff how the world works. A subgroup of those people have the smarts necessary to work out what is true, yet they are seemingly uninterested in putting any effort at all into looking into information that might change their minds. Some of them are just lazy. But there is also overlap with the final group of people I want to mention.
Most annoying of all are the liars who have learned something about the stuff (perhaps by being educated out of the state of innocent misunderstanding or obliviousness), but who continue to preach what they know are lies. Those are the ideologues, the con men, the trolls, the sociopaths and the wannabe cult leaders.
