Twenty-three years after On the Origin of Species was published, its author was given a de facto state funeral in Westminster Abbey. Establishment opinion was no longer scandalised by his supposedly most scandalous of theories.

In his authoritative study of how in Darwinism was received in the US and UK in the 19th century, James Moore observes that "with but few exceptions the leading Christian thinkers in Great Britain and America came to terms quite readily with Darwinism and evolution."

It was a different story at the popular level. The general public never accepted the theory as readily as intellectuals did, in large part because it often encountered evolution as a social rather than scientific theory. Social Darwinism argued that might was right, and that to protect the weak and vulnerable was to defy nature. Only the fittest should survive.

Understandably, this doctrine had limited appeal for those deemed weak or unfit, and helped fuel anti-evolutionary sentiment in the early 20th century, particularly in America where Social Darwinism was more influential.

A similar thing seems to be happening today. According to a Theos/ComRes research study, the initial findings of which are published today, over half of Britons are sceptical about Darwinian evolution.

Rather than slotting people into predetermined categories on the basis of a single question (as previous research in UK has tended to do), this study asked over 2,000 respondents their opinions of evolution, intelligent design (ID) and creationism, in a number of different questions, comparing and scrutinising their answers to ascertain the level of people's conviction and coherence.

The results revealed opinions that were rather more complex and confused than had been previously thought. Roughly a quarter of people were consistent and convinced Darwinians, while slightly fewer were equally consistent and convinced opponents (split between "young earth" creationism and ID). The remaining 50% were somewhere between, mixing different ideas and showing a distinct inclination to hedge their bets. Darwinian evolution is probably true … but, then, so is ID.

Those who actively reject evolution do so for predictable reasons. Some genuinely believe evolution is scientifically flawed, others think it contradicts their sacred text.

But most people do not actively reject evolution – they are simply sceptical about it. And the reason for their scepticism appears to lie in the fact that too many encounter Darwinism not as an elegant, parsimonious and well-evidenced scientific theory, but as a quasi-metaphysical one, an outlook on life that has become inextricably linked, through the purple prose of its most eloquent modern proponents, with reductionism, nihilism, atheism, and amorality.

According to this understanding of Darwinism, morality (in as far as we can still talk about it) becomes calculating and fundamentally self-interested, ethical systems arbitrary, agency an illusion, human beings accidental and irrelevant, the human mind "a habitat for memes", the universe no more than "blind forces and physical replication", and God a nonsense.

This was not Darwin's understanding of evolution and it need not be ours. Evolution is perfectly compatible with belief in God, in human uniqueness, and with absolute morality. Indeed, as our understanding of convergence – "the recurrent tendency of biological organisation to arrive at the same 'solution' to a particular need" – deepens, it becomes clear that evolution is not even incompatible with ideas of design and purpose.

The bad news is that, just as a century ago when popular opinion met evolution in the guise of socio-political doctrine and often rejected it, today popular opinion is encountering it in a quasi-philosophical guise, and similarly turning away.

The good news is that the problem is entirely solvable. Our modern vision of a bleak, pitiless metaphysical Darwinism is no more authentic than Herbert Spencer's bleak, pitiless Social Darwinism. Darwinism can be rescued from a philosophical quagmire that Darwin himself always sought to avoid.

Also on Comment is free: belief – Adam Rutherford's reaction to the Theos survey