Two points:

1) While (according to the poll) only 40% of the US populace accepts evolutionary theory, only 25% believes in creationism; the other 35% either said they did not know or otherwise expressed no opinion. This, of course, means that the majority of those who DID express an opinion accepted evolutionary theory.

2) I remember another article that expressed something like on of the posted article’s arguments; it is here (and I will quote the relevant section:

Where Are They?
Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.
By Nick Bostrom
technologyreview.com
(free registration required)

Now, it might be thought an amazing coincidence if Earth were the only planet in the galaxy on which intelligent life evolved. If it happened here, the one planet we have studied closely, surely one would expect it to have happened on a lot of other planets in the galaxy—planets we have not yet had the chance to examine. This objection, however, rests on a fallacy: it overlooks what is known as an “observation selection effect.” Whether intelligent life is common or rare, every observer is guaranteed to originate from a place where intelligent life did, in fact, arise. Since only the successes give rise to observers who can wonder about their existence, it would be a mistake to regard our planet as a randomly selected sample from all planets. (It would be closer to the mark to regard our planet as a random sample from the subset of planets that did engender intelligent life, this being a crude formulation of one of the saner ideas extractable from the motley ore referred to as the “anthropic principle.”)

Since this point confuses many, it is worth expanding on it slightly. Consider two different hypotheses. One says that the evolution of intelligent life is a fairly straightforward process that happens on a significant fraction of all suitable planets. The other hypothesis says that the evolution of intelligent life is extremely complicated and happens perhaps on only one out of a million billion planets. To evaluate their plausibility in light of your evidence, you must ask yourself, “What do these hypotheses predict I should observe?” If you think about it, both hypotheses clearly predict that you should observe that your civilization originated in places where intelligent life evolved. All observers will share that observation, whether the evolution of intelligent life happened on a large or a small fraction of all planets. An observation-selection effect guarantees that whatever planet we call “ours” was a success story. And as long as the total number of planets in the universe is large enough to compensate for the low probability of any given one of them giving rise to intelligent life, it is not a surprise that a few success stories exist.