Fundamentalist and Moderate Protestants R3 comprise a large number of separately identified denominations. Please note that "Fundamentalist" here is not a label vouchsafed or approved by the respondent but a grouping of denominations developed by Smith for GSS on the basis of historical origins and statements of doctrine by the various denominations.
In particular, a person can prefer one of the denominations classified as Fundamentalist without personally affirming all or any of the "five tenets" historically presented and advocated since early in the past century by some as "The Fundamentals". Marsden is a basic source on this matter as well as the complex evolution of fundamentalism. Here is another place where typological thinking can do great mischief. Not all Fundamentalists are fundamentalists and vice versa. Some fish do have legs.
The tree diagram Figure 3 is intended to convey information about both the heterogeneity of the American population with respect to religious commitments and the variation in prevalence of creationism among the subpopulations that can be identified with the variables at our disposal. Many of them are thinly populated, to be sure, but all of them would be encountered in significant numbers in the American population.
It would be interesting to study the variation in creation prevalence across these 54 subpopulations. But because of the small sample size, the estimates of percentage creationist for most of them would be statistically meaningless. Hence we resort to a grouping of the 54 into 12 combinations that are produced as one variable after another is introduced to create cross-classifications.
Even with this drastic compression of the data, several of these 12 occur so infrequently that the prevalence estimates, shown on the right-hand scale of Figure 3, are not highly reliable.
What we have here can be likened to a small-scale highway map of a large state as contrasted with a detailed road map of a single county. We must ignore interesting interactions that might be reliably estimated with much larger samples. Sample size is a pervasive problem in analyzing data from surveys of religious behavior, which are not supported by funding from such major government programs as is space exploration.
Let us indicate explicitly how to read the figure. But the contrasts among the three subcategories of G2 B3 R3 defined by A3, A2, and A1 levels of attendance are unmistakably significant. Leaving other interesting comparisons to the reader, we simply note that the variation in prevalence of creationism among the 12 subpopulations dramatically illustrates the extreme heterogeneity of the religious sectors of the American public with respect to acceptance or rejection of evolution.
Any one of the four variables by itself can give only an inkling of that heterogeneity. The most startling finding of our study, one not hitherto anticipated by earlier research as far as we know, turns up when we look at the religion variables and education simultaneously. In Figure 4, we compare groups of adults of all ages with differing levels of educational attainment. Hence, the data for older people generally pertain to educational experiences undergone at more or less distant times in the past, not to the current output of the educational system.
The interaction of education and religion is highlighted when we reduce the 12 combinations of religion indicators in Figure 3 to just 5, by grouping those with similar prevalence rates of creationism. In the sector defined by firm belief in God in combination with biblical literalism and medium to high frequency of attendance at religious services top curve in Figure 4 , persons with more advanced schooling actually are more likely to be creationists than those with lesser amounts of education.
Pennock 37 observes that proponents of creationism have been successful in seeing to it that "many students of [fundamentalist and evangelical] religious backgrounds now enter university primed to resist evolution. The positive relationship of creationism to education among the very religious may become even stronger in the future.
To find the expected negative relationship of education to creationism which we see in the Gallup data, we have to look at the one-eighth of the population who are not firm believers including explicit non-believers and who are skeptics in regard to the Bible bottom curve. The three intermediate curves track the distortion of that relationship as more serious religious commitments of one kind or another are specified in identifying the groupings.
Here and throughout the inquiry we must be wary of assuming well-defined causal chains. People who come to doubt the dogma of creationism upon learning about evolution in school may revise their religious beliefs and commitments accordingly. Or, to the contrary, those who maintain their creationist stance all the way through graduate school may use their education only as a means of defining more clearly what it is that they are against.
Others — those experiencing early indoctrination in creationism and growing up in the religious environment in which this is likely to occur — may be less likely to pursue advanced education. And we cannot distinguish between the people who completed college without ever having a decent course in biology from those who followed the preacher's advice to college students heard in Oklahoma in the s: answer the biology quizzes in such a way as to satisfy the teacher while maintaining faith in the Bible as the only infallible authority.
Such uncertainties notwithstanding, it seems reasonable to suggest that religion defeats education, or has done so in the past, in the United States in a way or to an extent that is not observed in other countries comparable to the United States in regard to political maturation, economic development, and history of religious commitments. We have data from the International Social Survey Program for seven such countries. We calculated the percentage of creationists that would be observed in each of these historically Protestant countries, given their actual distributions of responses to the four religion variables and assuming the rates of creationism associated with combinations of those variables to be the same as those in the United States.
In Figure 5, we treat the nine geographic regions as if they were so many additional countries. If in all cases the percentage of creationists observed in each country or region were to be identical to the percentage expected on the basis of the kind and degree of commitment to religion in these areas, all the data points would lie on the diagonal of the chart.
That is very nearly true. The plotted line that best fits the data is very close to that diagonal. When I talk about the theory of evolution, I refer to an overarching set of principles and predictions that allows me to understand the natural world. A scientific theory is not a tentative statement, but rather is supported by empirical evidence. When I talk about hypotheses I refer to predictions, based on theory, that require testing. The hypothesis is tentative, and may be refuted by evidence, but the failure of a hypothesis does not necessarily degrade a theory.
Positioning intelligent design as scientific theory is inappropriate, because it lacks empirical support and portions of it are untestable. Learning to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate uses of those words requires more than simply memorizing definitions. If students apply that knowledge and practice the skills associated with science, they will generate a deeper understanding. If I simply state that creationism is not scientific, then I ask my students to take my word for it because I am the authority as a scientist.
When I allow them to apply the scientific method to creationism, they practice being scientists themselves. Although critical thinking is very difficult to teach, and often does not transfer across domains Halpern, , there is incremental value in providing multiple opportunities to practice critical thinking while learning new scientific content Willingham, My position is not restricted to the use of creationism to teach critical thinking. The same position could apply to other anti-science views including those opposed to vaccines or other validated medical procedures, to climate change denialism, or to other supernatural explanations for natural phenomena.
As educators, we can take the opportunity to tackle topics that students may see in the media, on social media, or around the dinner table, and model our thought processes as we explain how scientists come to conclusions. We can also allow students to practice their logic skills, and apply them to new topics that arise with each poorly informed Facebook meme, or celebrity fad. Non-science and anti-science views do have a place in the science classroom, because they can be used to train students in the logic associated with scientific thought.
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Alexander, P. Teaching as persuasion. Angus, R. Google Scholar. Barnes, R. Skeptic 19, 49— Confer, J. Evolutionary psychology. Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations. Cosmides, L. The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason?
Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition 31, — PubMed Abstract Google Scholar. Coyne, J. Dawkins, R.
One Side Can be Wrong. The Guardian online edition. Diethelm, P. Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond? Health 19, 2—4. Dobzhansky, T. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Goodwin, C. A History of Modern Psychology , 2nd Edn. New Jersey, NJ: Wiley. Grayling, A. Teach the Controversy video podcast. Halpern, D.
The majority of those not familiar with evolution choose the creationist viewpoint. These relationships do not necessarily prove that if Americans were to learn more about evolution they would be more likely to believe in it.
Those with less education are most likely to espouse the creationist view and to be least familiar with evolution, but it's not clear that gaining more education per se would shift their perspectives. Many religious Americans accept creationism mostly on the basis of their religious convictions. Whether their beliefs would change if they became more familiar with evolution is an open question.
These Americans tend to be highly religious, underscoring the degree to which many Americans view the world around them through the lens of their religious beliefs. Those who adopt the creationist view also tend to have lower education levels, but given the strong influence of religious beliefs, it is not clear to what degree having more education or different types of education might affect their views. A number of states have been embroiled in fights in recent years over the degree to which evolution and creationism should be included in their public school curricula.
Residents in the South are more likely to believe in the creationist view of the origin of humans than are those living in other regions, making it clear why the fights to have creationism addressed in the public schools might be an important political issue in that region.
Still, few scientists would agree that humans were created pretty much in their present form at one time 10, years ago, underscoring the ongoing discontinuity between the beliefs that many Americans hold and the general scientific consensus on this important issue. Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May , , with a random sample of 1, adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Those with a college degree are much more likely to believe in evolution than creationism, while the opposite is true of those without a college degree.
However, even among adults with a college degree, more believe God had a role in evolution than say it occurred without God. Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works. View complete question responses and trends. Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June , , with a random sample of 1, adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.
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