Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, sciencegirl!

Originally Posted by sciencegirl94

This is interesting- I read it in National Geographic:
-45% of American adults do not believe in evolution.
-37% of them somehow believe in it- they say God created the Universe, but Evolution formed the shape of life.
-only 12% said that they believe in evolution, and that God did not take part in the creation of humans.

Though minor differences with these statistics are found in different surveys, all of those with which I’m acquainted have similar results.

As shown by this 3/2007 article about a 8/2006 article illustrates, the fraction of people who accept Darwinian evolution vs. religious creation stories varies substantially from country to country (of the surveyed countries, only Turkey favored creation over evolution more than the US).

The article contains a lot of expert speculation about possible reasons for people’s beliefs, and about relics and biases of survey designs.

Personally, I feel the US’s unusually low rate of acceptance of evolution is largely due to its tradition of questioning authority. Combined with the usual lack of strong science education by most people in all countries, I believe this skepticism results in a tendency among Americans to favor intuitive conclusions. Religious creation stories are, I believe, more intuitively compelling than scientific theories, and thus favored.