Among Wealthy Nations, Across Disparate Studies, It Seems That US Churchgoers are Skeptical of Evolution
Last Friday's issue of the journal Science published a science Policy Forum article by Jon Miller, Eugenie Scott and Shinji Okamoto, who surveyed attitudes towards evolution in Japan, the U.S. and European countries. They tried to correlate individual attitudes towards evolution with people's political and religious leanings in "Public Acceptance of Evolution". Their results are interesting and so are their conclusions.
The authors found that in the U.S., "One in five adults [is] still undecided or unaware of [evolution]". This number has remained stable over the past 20 years. However among 34 countries, including Europe, Japan, and the United States, citizens living in the U.S. are least likely to believe in evolution. The graph below, which I based on their bar graph, summarizes some of the data.(The sample size was about 1000 people (median) per country)
It's disheartening to see the US at the bottom of the chart like that, but before becoming too morose consider the investigators' methodology. They compared different studies done at different times, across different years, in different countries:
"Beginning in 1985, national samples of U.S. adults have been asked whether the statement, "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals," is true or false, or whether the respondent is not sure or does not know. We compared the results of these surveys with survey data from nine European countries in 2002, surveys in 32 European countries in 2005, and a national survey in Japan in 2001."
Are these studies comparable? Doesn't it depend on who asks the question, how they ask it, and what the follow-up question is? For instance there are lots of polls here, and you can see how you might derive different answers from different questions. Consider the following questions about cloning:
- FOX News questions people about cloning, saying: "As you may know, scientists have made advances in cloning, where they can reproduce a whole animal from a single cell. Do you think it's acceptable to use cloning to reproduce..a beloved pet? Humans?" In response, 84/89% (pets/humans) of those surveyed opposed.
- Pew Research asked, "Do you favor or oppose scientific experimentation on the cloning of humans", and why to you object? 77% opposed.
- Virginia Commonwealth University asked: "In general, do you think it is morally acceptable...to use human cloning technology in developing new treatments for disease?" (emphasis added) 53% opposed.
Fox News frames the question around the market and asks people to visualize cloning a whole person. Virginia Commonwealth, on the other hand, asks the more scientifically feasible and politically realistic question, and the results differ by 30%! How can you merge these results?
Different audiences, different questions, will yield different results. The Science authors acknowledge that the true-false format of the U.S. surveys skew the results towards extreme positions, but say that the disparate data sets are comparable. Whether you raise an eyebrow at that or not, you can still accept their conclusion that the U.S. harbors many religious people. The United States is historically a far more religious country then Western Europe. Over 90% of Americans believe in God, 97-98% according to some sources, while only 40% of Europeans believe in God. About 60% of Americans attend church, compared to 10% of Europeans in some countries. These numbers have apparently been fairly stable for decades (despite what the press says). With these wide differences, readily accessible on the internet, it's easy to surmise that "doubt" in evolution might be more prevalent in the U.S than in Europe without doing any study.
Do the number of hours spent in church correlate with more doubt about evolution? Maybe. The authors of the Science study found that people U.S. who self-identified as religious were much less likely to believe in evolution compared to those in Europe. But it's even more basic than that. Glancing at a Pew Research study on attitudes towards religion shows that those countries where people reported that "religion plays a very important role in their lives", are the very same countries that where the Science authors found that people were the least likely to believe in scientific evolution.
This shows a direct inverse relationship between church going, and trust in the science supporting evolution.
Below is a list of all the countries that appeared on both tables, in the order that they appeared. Interestingly, however, the strong inverse relationship between the two falls apart around Communism. 
If we were to take this inverse relationship one step farther, we could use the Pew Research data to forecast how a certain country's attitude about religion might predict attitudes towards evolution. As the table shows, according to the Pew Research, Brazil, S. Africa and India are more religious than the U.S., as is all of Africa, much of South America, and South Asia. Therefore although the Science data shows the U.S. at the *bottom*, as the Pew Research report concludes, it is only at the bottom of wealthy countries. This presentation of the data is less alarming (I think), than what Science finds, that bloggers have latched onto. Mexico has about the same attitudes as the U.S towards religion, about 57% of the people are "very religious". Canada is closer to Great Britain, at 30%. Only 25% of Koreans said they were "very religious".
The authors also used structural equation modeling (SEM) to correlate between different variables, in a survey of nine European countries and the U.S. In addition to religion, they looked at age, gender, education, genetic literacy, attitudes toward life, political ideology and attitudes, beliefs and reservations towards science and technology. Interestingly, the authors found that U.S. participants scored higher for "Genetic Literacy", but were confused about "core ideas related to 20th and 21st century biology":
"78% of adults agreed to a description of the evolution of plants and animals. But, 62% of adults in the same study believed that God created humans as whole persons without any evolutionary development."
The Science authors chalk this up to an exceptionalist perspective; people contort their ideas about evolution to fit their religious ideas, or vice versa. They point out that not many adults understood the extent of the genetic overlap between humans, chimpanzees, and mice, but say this isn't surprising given many adults don't know what DNA is. They find that "The results of the [statistical analysis] indicate that Genetic literacy is one important component that predicts adult acceptance of evolution." The authors note this "should be troubling for science educators" and advocate for better science education:
"Basic concepts of evolution should be taught in middle school, high school, and college life sciences courses and the growing number of adults who are uncertain about these ideas suggests that current science instruction is not effective."
Does Education Matter? Or Does Peers, Politics and Pressure?
Some of the most public Intelligent Design (ID) proponents are very schooled, the most "educated". Many of the founders of the ID movement have years of science classes. Two days ago the New York Times published an article about the Kansas school board, How to Make Sure Children Are Scientifically Illiterate. Lawrence M. Krauss wrote:
"The chairman of the school board, Dr. Steve Abrams, a veterinarian, is not merely a strict creationist. He has openly stated that he believes that God created the universe 6,500 years ago....A key concern should not be whether Dr. Abrams's religious views have a place in the classroom, but rather how someone whose religious views require a denial of essentially all modern scientific knowledge can be chairman of a state school board...To maintain a belief in a 6,000-year-old earth requires a denial of essentially all the results of modern physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology and geology. It is to imply that airplanes and automobiles work by divine magic, rather than by empirically testable laws."
The NYT author concludes: "As we continue to work to improve the abysmal state of science education in our schools, we will continue to battle those who feel that knowledge is a threat to faith." It's disturbing to consider a zeitgeist where faith and knowledge are competing interests. But it's equally disturbing, and simpler, to consider the background of Abrams, the school board veterinarian. How could such a well-schooled, science educated veterinarian, broadcast such aspersions against the basic science that bulwarks his profession?
How could a cardiologist or biochemist do this? Yet all these fields, and others, are represented in the ID community. Developmental biologists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and other scientists might claim in ornery moments that these people, vets and docs and all, aren't evolutionists, therefore aren't really qualified to speak about it. But that's a weak argument. The vet had many basic biology, biochemistry, chemistry and physics courses before veering off to treat cat diabetes. So did the cardiologist, before cashing in on bypass surgeries. Both had to memorize an awful lot of physiology. Both had to know evolution science. The doctor needed to ply apart many bits of a wizened cadaver and has intimate knowledge of human development. They have the information and intellectual tools that make them most capable of grasping evolution, yet they instead choose biblical stories to explain human existence on earth. Faced with this real and discouraging evidence, why do smart scientists keep insisting that more education will solve the problem?
We heartily argue in favor of education, of course, but politics is influential, perhaps more influential than we would like to admit. Pay attention to school boards Krauss says. The Science authors found that those who self-identify as politically conservative were also less likely to believe in religion -- but that didn't make them approach the subject rationally:
"Politicization of science in the name of religion and political partisanship is not new to the United States, but the transformation of traditional geographically and economically base political parties into religiously oriented ideological coalitions marks the beginning of a new era for science policy".
Politics routinely uses religion for coercion, from the Blasphemy laws and taxes in Europe during the Protestant reformation, to George Washington's hope that religion would help keep the troops in line and later, the citizens from resisting. Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote in Democracy in America (1835): "There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America." He also said, that "they brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion." Scholars like Jon Butler argue that America emerged after many years from deist, rather that pious, Puritan roots, and that Americans have become more religious over time. In all ways, religion has historically used as a political tool -- this is not new to the United States, nor are are "ideological coalitions".
That science should be swept up into this is no surprise. Science has become an integral part of our lives, and so all politicians and ID proponents embrace science even when they reject science. You don't hear a lot of politicians saying, "no I don't want that triple bypass, I'll just let God deal with it". But from a political control perspective, the spector of God serves to keep people in line. So despite how discouraging the present moment seems with regards to the number of vocal believers in creation, this too will ebb. Religious attitudes have surged and waned throughout history, always taking science hostage to superstition.
Education is important, but perhaps we shouldn't expect education to fix the problem. Will education sustain voters who believe that a certain political candidate will reward them financially? Will education make voters feel *included*? Perhaps politics and peer pressure at church exerts more influence than peer pressure in education. Maybe if Sunday school only lasted for a quarter or a semester, but then every Sunday for the rest of peoples' adult lives they went to Science School and a picnic afterwards, where politicians dropped by to chat and smile and kiss their babies, people would acknowledge the science of evolution.
