...Acceptance of the basic tenets of evolutionary theory, therefore, is a good litmus test for any modern society. Of what, exactly, is another question, but certainly something is going wrong if the population does not accept this overwhelming scientific consensus. The US ranks second from the bottom (only Turkey is worse) in terms of accepting evolutionary theory. Researchers have been tracking the statistics for decades, and now some of the lead researchers in this field have published data from 1985 to 2020 (sorry it’s behind a paywall). There are some interesting details to pull from the numbers.

The lead author is Jon Miller, who studies scientific literacy. One co-author is Eugenie Scott, a fellow skeptic, who we interviewed on the SGU this week about the study. The big news is that between 1985 and 2007 US public acceptance and rejection of evolutionary theory were in a statistical dead heat, each hovering between 40-45%, with “don’t know” varying between 10-20%. Then since 2007 the lines have started diverging, by 2019 with more people accepting evolution. (54%) than rejecting (36%). It’s too early to say how long this trend will hold or where it will stabilize, if it does, but this is a significant difference from the prior several decades. What is going on?

If we delve into the data we can see some predictors of accepting vs rejecting belief in evolution. The overwhelmingly most predictive factor is the degree to which one holds fundamentalist religious views. When it comes down to it, that is most of the phenomenon of evolution denial. All other factors are either minor or derive from fundamentalism. For example, political affiliation also correlates with belief, but this can be entirely explained by the fact that fundamentalists are mostly Republicans.

These numbers also explain much of the recent increase in evolution acceptance. In 1988 those ranking lowest on the fundamentalism scale accepted evolution at 78%, while the highest at only 8%. In 2019 the numbers were 91% and 32% respectively – a third of the most fundamentalist people now accept evolution. That is a significant change. In addition evangelical protestants (the main group of Christian fundamentalists in the US) have been slowly declining as a share of the US population (now down from 25% to about 14%).

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More at: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/evolution-denial-survey/