Science, religion, and society: the problem of evolution in america

American resistance to accepting evolution is uniquely high among First World countries. This is due largely to the extreme religiosity of the United States, which is much higher than that of comparably advanced nations, and to the resistance of many religious people to the facts and supposed implications of evolution. The prevalence of religious belief in the United States suggests that outreach by scientists alone will not have a huge effect in increasing the acceptance of evolution, nor will the strategy of trying to convince the faithful that evolution is compatible with their religion. Because creationism is a symptom of religion, another strategy to promote evolution involves loosening the grip of faith on America. This is easier said than done, for recent sociological surveys show that religion is highly correlated with the dysfunctionality of a society, and various measures of societal health show that the United States is one of the most socially dysfunctional First World countries. Widespread acceptance of evolution in America, then, may have to await profound social change.     

The Recognition Signal Hypothesis for the Adaptive Evolution of Religion

Recent research on the evolution of religion has focused on whether religion is an unselected by-product of evolutionary processes or if it is instead an adaptation by natural selection. Adaptive hypotheses for religion include direct fitness benefits from improved health and indirect fitness benefits mediated by costly signals and/or cultural group selection. Herein, I propose that religious denominations achieve indirect fitness gains for members through the use of ecologically arbitrary beliefs, rituals, and moral rules that function as recognition markers of cultural inheritance analogous to kin and species recognition of genetic inheritance in biology. This recognition signal hypotheses could act in concert with either costly signaling or cultural group selection to produce evolutionarily altruistic behaviors within denominations. Using a cultural phylogenetic analysis, I show that a large set of religious behaviors among extant Christian denominations supports the prediction of the recognition signal hypothesis that characters change more frequently near historical schisms. By incorporating demographic data into the model, I show that more-distinctive denominations, as measured through dissimilar characteristics, appear to be protected from intrusion by nonmembers in mixed-denomination households, and that they may be experiencing greater biological growth of their populations even in the present day.     

University Evolution Education: The Effect of Evolution Instruction on Biology Majors�� Content Knowledge, Attitude Toward Evolution, and Theistic Position

Issues regarding understanding of evolution and resistance to evolution education in the United States are of key importance to biology educators at all levels. While research has measured student views toward evolution at single points in time, few studies have been published investigating whether views of college seniors are any different than first-year students in the same degree program. Additionally, students choosing to major in biological sciences have largely been overlooked, as if their acceptance of evolution is assumed. This study investigated the understanding of evolution and attitude toward evolution held by students majoring in biological science during their first and fourth years in a public research university. Participants included students in a first-year introductory biology course intended for biological science majors and graduating seniors earning degrees in either biology or genetics. The portion of the survey reported here consisted of quantitative measures of students’ understanding of core concepts of evolution and their attitude toward evolution. The results indicate that students’ understanding of particular evolutionary concepts is significantly higher among seniors, but their attitude toward evolution is only slightly improved compared to their first-year student peers. When comparing first-year students and seniors, students’ theistic position was not significantly different.     

European Christians are at the forefront in accepting evolution: results from an internet-based survey

Beliefs regarding the origins of the universe and life differ substantially between groups of people and are often particularly associated with religious worldviews. It is important to understand factors associated with evolution and creationism beliefs and unacceptance of scientific evidence for evolution. An internet-based survey was conducted to elicit information from people who self-identify as Christians, atheists, agnostics and other belief systems, as well as by geographical location and other demographic variables, on acceptance of evolution or creationism, certainty with which each position is believed, and reasons for rejecting the alternative. It was found that almost 60% of Christians believe in creationism and less than 10% believe in natural evolution. Worldwide, these proportions were relatively consistent across all locations except for in Europe. Among European Christians the majority of Christians believe in a form of evolution. It was found that the vast majority (87%) of Christians are 'absolutely certain' about their beliefs, compared with the minority of atheists and agnostics claiming 'absolute certainty'. Generally, reasons Christians did not accept evolution were based not on evidence but on religious doctrine. In contrast, the most common reason for not accepting the existence of a god by atheists who supported evolution was the lack of evidence. Innovative strategies may be required to communicate evolutionary science effectively to non-European Christians.     

Evolutionary trees from DNA sequences: A maximum likelihood approach

Summary The application of maximum likelihood techniques to the estimation of evolutionary trees from nucleic acid sequence data is discussed. A computationally feasible method for finding such maximum likelihood estimates is developed, and a computer program is available. This method has advantages over the traditional parsimony algorithms, which can give misleading results if rates of evolution differ in different lineages. It also allows the testing of hypotheses about the constancy of evolutionary rates by likelihood ratio tests, and gives rough indication of the error of the estimate of the tree.By acceptance of this article, the publisher and/or recipient acknowledges the U.S. government's right to retain a nonexclusive, royalty-free licence in and to any copyright covering this paperThis report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Government. Neither the United States nor the United States Department of Energy, nor any of their employees, nor any of their contractors, subcontractors, or their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately-owned rights     

Evolution and Religion: Attitudes of Scottish Bioscience Students to the Teaching of Evolutionary Biology

In a questionnaire-based survey, the proportion of Glasgow University first year biology students who rejected evolution in 2009–2011 was about 7%, similar to the previously reported average figure for 1987–1999. However, by final year, evolution rejection was absent in students who studied evolution beyond first year and 4% among those who did not. Evolution rejection was closely related to accepting a religion-based alternative, whereas acceptance was related to finding the evidence convincing. Although many religious students accepted evolution, 50% of Islamic students were rejecters, compared to 25% of Christians. A question testing acceptance of several scientific propositions showed no evidence that evolution rejecters were generally more skeptical of science than accepters. Rejecters were overall less secure than accepters in their identification of the correct definition for terms related to evolution and creationism, but, surprisingly, more than 10% of final year students chose a Lamarckian definition for Darwinian evolution. Accepters and rejecters responded equally poorly to a question on Darwin’s history, but level 4 was much better. A breakdown of evolution into three components (human origins, macroevolution, and microevolution) found that some evolution rejecters accepted some components, with microevolution having the highest acceptance and human origins the lowest. These findings are discussed in terms of strategies for evolution education and the phenomenon of evolution rejection worldwide.     

Beyond rupture: Christian culture in the Pacific

In its many forms, Christianity tends to focus adherents’ attention upon earlier religious traditions, compelling them to renew their faith, repent and seek redemption. This special issue takes up questions about Christianity’s temporal ‘secondarity’. Contributors move beyond increasingly futile theoretical debates about rupture and continuity by considering how Christians in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands conceptualise and enact their fraught relationships with prior religious traditions. By examining the place of culture within Christianity, contributors avoid the analytical pitfalls of assuming that Pacific culture is not already thoroughly Christian. Rather than taking up questions about initial Christian conversion, these articles focus on revival. The relentless campaigns of Christian renewal that have transformed religious landscapes more than a generation aim not only to overcome pre‐Christian powers, but also to supersede earlier versions of Christianity. In examining not only highly localised ethnotheologies, but also regional movements, this issue opens questions that should be of interest beyond the anthropology of Christianity.     

Improving How Evolution Is Taught: Facilitating a Shift from Memorization to Evolutionary Thinking

In North America, public understanding and acceptance of evolution is alarmingly low. Moreover, acceptance rates are declining, and studies suggest that even students who have taken courses in evolution have the same misunderstandings as the general public. These data signal deficiencies in our educational system and provide a “call to arms” to improve how evolution is taught. Many studies show that student education can be improved by replacing lecture-based pedagogy with active learning approaches—where the role of students changes from passive note taking to active problem solving. Here, we describe changes made to a second-year undergraduate evolution course to facilitate a shift to active learning and improve student understanding of evolution. First, lectures were used only sparingly and were largely replaced by problem-solving activities. Second, standard textbooks were replaced by “popular” books applying evolutionary thinking to topics students encounter on a daily basis. Lastly, predefined laboratory exercises were replaced by student-designed and implemented research projects. These changes led to increased student engagement and enjoyment, improved understanding of evolution and ability to apply evolutionary thinking to biological problems, and increased student recognition that evolutionary thinking is important not only in the classroom but also in their daily lives.     

Erich Wasmann, Ernst Haeckel, and the limits of science

Summary In the late nineteenth century, two German evolutionary biologists, Ernst Haeckel and Erich Wasmann, argued publicly about how to apply evolutionary biology and where its explanatory limits, if any, lay. The German Jesuit evolutionist entomologist Wasmann’s (1859–1931) faith and Jesuit philosophical training intersected to reconcile evolution and Catholicism by delineating the philosophical limits of science: Wasmann demarcated a material and historical world, which science can describe, and the realm of subjective experience and the soul, which it cannot. Wasmann’s evolution contrasted (and conflicted) strongly with contemporary German atheistic and anticlerical monistic evolutionary biology. This paper discusses Wasmann’s very public debates with monism’s prophet, Ernst Haeckel.     

Assessment of Biology Majors’ Versus Nonmajors’ Views on Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design

The controversy around evolution, creationism, and intelligent design resides in a historical struggle between scientific knowledge and popular belief. Four hundred seventy-six students (biology majors n = 237, nonmajors n = 239) at a secular liberal arts private university in Northeastern United States responded to a five-question survey to assess their views about: (1) evolution, creationism, and intelligent design in the science class; (2) students’ attitudes toward evolution; (3) students’ position about the teaching of human evolution; (4) evolution in science exams; and (5) students’ willingness to discuss evolution openly. There were 60.6% of biology majors and 42% of nonmajors supported the exclusive teaching of evolution in the science class, while 45.3% of nonmajors and 32% of majors were willing to learn equally about evolution, creationism, and intelligent design (question 1); 70.5% of biology majors and 55.6% of nonmajors valued the factual explanations evolution provides about the origin of life and its place in the universe (question 2); 78% of the combined responders (majors plus nonmajors) preferred science courses where evolution is discussed comprehensively and humans are part of it (question 3); 69% of the combined responders (majors plus nonmajors) had no problem answering questions concerning evolution in science exams (question 4); 48.1% of biology majors and 26.8% of nonmajors accepted evolution and expressed it openly, but 18.2% of the former and 14.2% of the latter accepted evolution privately; 46% of nonmajors and 29.1% of biology majors were reluctant to comment on this topic (question 5). Combined open plus private acceptance of evolution within biology majors increased with seniority, from freshman (60.7%) to seniors (81%), presumably due to gradual exposure to upper-division biology courses with evolutionary content. College curricular/pedagogical reform should fortify evolution literacy at all education levels, particularly among nonbiologists.     

The Stagnancy of Family Studies in Modern Academia: Resistances Toward the Integration of Evolutionary Theory

The theory of natural selection has been vital in unifying the biological sciences and their research with a single testable metatheory. Despite a plethora of research supporting natural selection, teaching the theory of evolution remains controversial in high schools and higher education (Wilson et al. 2009; Scott 1997). In this article, we sample the attitudes toward evolution of 170 faculty and graduate and undergraduate students in family studies and human development programs from across the United States to determine whether resistances toward evolution remain and to describe the correlates of these resistances. Results reveal that an individual’s prosocial meliorist attitudes, religious ideation, and his or her reported interest in and knowledge of evolution all uniquely contribute to whether they report evolutionary theory as being applicable to their area of research interests. We discuss the relevance of including evolutionary theory within family studies and human development research programs and make suggestions for how to implement an evolutionary studies program (Wilson et al. 2009).     

Awareness and Acceptance of Evolution and Evolutionary Medicine Among Medical Students in Pakistan

Evolutionary medicine is a perspective on medical sciences derived through application of theory of evolution to aid in therapeutics. This study sought to determine the level of knowledge and acceptance of evolutionary theory in medical students along with their attitude toward teaching evolutionary medicine as a part of their undergraduate course. Factors that are likely to cause difficulty in teaching evolutionary medicine were also identified. A cross-sectional study was carried out at Army Medical College, National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan in which 299 medical students were selected by nonprobability convenient sampling technique to participate in the study. Participants’ views were obtained by a structured questionnaire comprised of three sections: appreciation of evolutionary medicine, acceptance of evolutionary theory, knowledge of evolutionary theory. Medical students had a low acceptance [mean measure of acceptance of theory of evolution (MATE) = 58.32] and a low knowledge (mean score of 5.20 out of a total ten marks). Students believed that religious beliefs, lack of resources, and an existent extensive medical curriculum would cause difficulty in imparting such an education despite its potential to improve medical research and clinical practice. Only 37.2% agreed that the subject should be taught in medical schools as an individual subject.     

Attitudes of Students at a Private Christian Liberal Arts University Toward the Teaching of Evolution

Students at private Christian colleges tend to have a viewpoint that incorporates faith and belief in God. Whether due to misconceptions about evolution, lack of knowledge of the nature of science, or belief that their faith cannot allow them to accept evolution, there tends to be a great deal of confusion about evolution. This study investigates the attitudes toward evolution of students at a small Christian liberal arts university located in east Texas (East Texas Baptist University, ETBU) and how they would feel most comfortable being approached about evolution in the college science classroom. The majority of students at ETBU are from either Texas or Louisiana. In high school, both states require at least one science course to be taken and evolution to be taught at some level of understanding. Students show a fair understanding that science includes only naturalistic explanations . However, a greater number of science courses and maturity level of the student resulted in significant differences (P = 0.0001 and P = 0.002, respectively) in the understanding of science. Nevertheless, there was a general assertion that God should be included in the definition of science by the majority of students (64.4%), indicating a misunderstanding of the nature of science. Students responded that they would be most comfortable with being approached in the classroom about evolution through the presentation of the science supporting evolution (19.6%), and being shown how creationism and intelligent design are not science (29.8%). A number of students responded that the professor should accept creationism and intelligent design as science and teach them as such (38.2%). This paper will present methods to address students that respond to evolution in this manner.     

Characteristics of relinquishing and adoptive owners of horses associated with U.S. nonprofit equine rescue organizations

Nonprofit equine rescue organizations in the United States provide care for relinquished horses and may offer adoption programs. With an estimated 100,000 "unwanted" horses per year and few municipal shelters providing wholesale euthanasia, there is a need to minimize the number of unwanted horses and maximize their successful transition to new caregivers. This study's objectives were to characterize the relinquishing and adoptive owners interacting with nonprofit rescue organizations. Nonprofit organizations (n = 144) in 37 states provided information by survey on 280 horses relinquished between 2006 and 2009, from which 73 were adopted. Results show the majority of relinquishing owners were women, whereas adoptive owners were primarily families or couples. Most relinquishing owners had previous equine experience and had owned the horse for 1 to 5 years; about half owned 1 other horse. Three quarters of the adoptive owners possessed additional horses housed on their property. The primary use for rehomed horses was for riding or driving. These findings will serve to help develop effective education programs for responsible horse ownership and optimize acceptance criteria and successful adoption strategies of horses by nonprofit organizations.     

Preservice elementary teachers’ willingness to specialize in science and views on evolution

Background

Acceptance and understanding of evolutionary ideas remains low in the United States despite renewed science education standards, nearly unanimous acceptance among scientists, and decades of research on the teaching and learning of evolution. Early exposure to evolutionary concepts may be one way to reduce resistance to learning and accepting evolution. While there is emerging evidence that elementary students can learn and retain evolutionary ideas, there is also emerging evidence that elementary teachers may be unprepared to teach evolution. It may not be possible to train elementary teachers like their secondary counterparts who receive specialized training in science. This exploratory study was designed to determine if the 147 surveyed preservice elementary teachers (PETs) who are most willing to specialize in science maintain a greater understanding and acceptance of evolution. Such a relationship could have implications for teacher training and science instruction at elementary schools.

Results

As willingness to specialize in science increases so too does acceptance of evolution. For both measures, there was a monotonic increase with increasing willingness to specialize in science. There was a significant correlation (p?=?.047) between willingness to specialize in science and acceptance of evolution as measured by the MATE. There was not a significant correlation between willingness to specialize in science and understanding of evolution as measured by the CINS (p?=?.21). The thirty-two PETs who are enthusiastically willing to specialize in science had the highest understanding and acceptance of evolution.

Conclusions

It may be possible to identify prospective elementary teachers that could assume roles as specialists simply by identifying PETs’ willingness to specialize. Such students appear to enter elementary teacher preparation programs with the science background and enthusiasm for science required to be specialists without the need for much additional training. Thus, science teacher educators could help local elementary school principals identify graduating, and recently graduated, elementary teachers who are willing to specialize in science. Identified teachers could serve as specialists to work with their building and district colleagues to develop, among other topics, evolution related curricular materials and facilitate the implementation of those materials through co-teaching and peer coaching.

     

Moral failure: a jeremiad of the war on drugs in Guatemala

The current consensus among social scientists and political pundits is that the war on drugs failed, with a raft of failed programmes, failed interventions, failed policies, and even failed states. But these critics have tended to overlook a more existential form of failure that plays a key role in the ongoing effects of the war on drugs. This failure, which anthropologists of Christianity are well positioned to understand, is the perceived failure of Pentecostal Christians to make right with the Lord. Based on extensive fieldwork in Guatemala, a country profoundly transformed by the illicit movement of cocaine from the Andes to the United States, this article assesses how and to what effect a sense of moral failure among the country's Christian communities sustains a now expansive network of Pentecostal drug rehabilitation centres. Reading one such centre's archive of intake forms as a jeremiad – a Christian lament that bemoans the failures of society to keep its covenant with God – this article concludes that a sense of moral failure sustains the fading edges of today's war on drugs.     

How Often Are Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Said to “Evolve” in the News?

Media plays an important role in informing the general public about scientific ideas. We examine whether the word “evolve,” sometimes considered controversial by the general public, is frequently used in the popular press. Specifically, we ask how often articles discussing antibiotic resistance use the word “evolve” (or its lexemes) as opposed to alternative terms such as “emerge” or “develop.” We chose the topic of antibiotic resistance because it is a medically important issue; bacterial evolution is a central player in human morbidity and mortality. We focused on the most widely-distributed newspapers written in English in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Australia. We examined all articles that focused primarily on the evolution of antibiotic resistance, were published in 2014 or earlier, and were accessible in online archives, for a total of 1639 articles. The total years examined per newspaper ranged from 5 to 37 years with a median of 27 years, and the overall range was 1978–2014. We quantified how many articles included the term “evolve” and analyzed how this varied with newspaper, country, and time. We found that an overall rate of 18% of articles used the term “evolve” but with significant variation among countries. Newspapers in the United Kingdom had the highest rate (24%), more than double of those in India (9%), the country with the lowest rate. These frequencies were lower than those found in scientific papers from both evolutionary journals and biomedical journals. There were no statistically significant changes in frequency and no trends when “evolve” usage was compared against variables such as newspaper circulation, liberal/conservative bias, time, and state evolution acceptance in U.S. newspapers. This study highlights the globally low usage of the word “evolve” in the popular press. We suggest this low usage may affect public understanding and acceptance of evolutionary concepts.     

A state-by-state comparison of middle school science standards on evolution in the United States

The focus of this study is a state-by-state comparison of middle school science standards on evolution in the United States. In 2009, Louise Mead and Anton Mates reviewed the high school science standards on evolution, giving each state a grade based on multiple factors including the number of times the word “evolution” is mentioned, the types of evolution covered, and the inclusion of creationist jargon (Mead and Mates in Evol Educ Outreach 2:359, 2009). Their study was a replication of an earlier one completed in 2000 by Lawrence Lerner and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (Lerner in Good science, bad science: teaching evolution in the states. Thomas Fordham Foundation, Washington, 2000). Mead and Mates indicated that, on average, the quality of the standards had increased over the decade between studies. This study concludes that this positive trend is now evident in the middle school science standards across the nation. We propose that early evolutionary education will be an excellent indicator of future acceptance of evolution across the United States and strongly encourage that evolution be introduced as the underlying theme of biology early in a student’s academic career.     

Patterns of enamel hypoplasia in two medieval populations from Nubia's Batn el Hajar

Analysis of enamel hypoplasia frequencies for two medieval populations representing the earliest and latest Christian periods of ancient Nubia reveals important diachronic shifts in childhood stress. The mean frequency for hypoplastic bands among the early Christians is 4.2, while the late Christian sample has a mean frequency of 3.7. In addition, the earlier Christians show a prolongation of hypoplastic occurrences through childhood corresponding to a prolonged period of intensified childhood mortality. The modal time interval between hypoplastic occurrences is also shorter for the early Christian children. A comparison of hypoplasia frequencies by sex also reveals a pattern of considerable interest. Females show both lower frequencies of hypoplasias as well as a delay in onset. The diachronic differences are consistent with other indications from paleopathology and paleodemography that childhood stress decreased in later Christian times. The sex differences suggest that during the infancy and early childhood females were more resilient than their male counterparts.     

Texas Biology and Biological Anthropology Faculty Express Their Views on Teaching Evolution

Unsurprisingly, survey results indicate that Texas biology and biological anthropology faculty with expertise in an evolutionary area strongly support teaching “just evolution” (100%; N = 54) and not creationism/intelligent design. Importantly, they do not think that religious faith is incompatible with acceptance of evolutionary biology (91%; N = 55), even though 50% (N = 52) describe themselves as “not at all religious.” As school boards nationwide debate science standards, it is important that faculty with relevant expertise have a voice. Biological anthropologists should not be overlooked as a public resource in these debates.