ABSTRACT
In a 2007 Gallup poll, 24% of Americans endorsed beliefs in both evolution and creationism, with another 41% believing that creationism is true and evolution is false. Of the rest, 28% believe that evolution is true and creationism is false (June 11, 2007). This result echoes earlier findings among parents and their adolescent children in the Midwest, with about a third of the sample endorsing both creationist and evolutionist views (Evans, 1994/95, 2000a, 2000b, 2001). Our focus in this chapter is on this phenomenon. What are the conceptual processes that underlie the endorsement of seemingly mutually inconsistent epistemologies? To address this issue we draw upon research in three related areas-beliefs about illness, death, and origins-and link these findings to recent work on the development of intuitive theories of biology and psychology. Although evolution is typically treated as if it were distinctly different from other areas of biological reasoning, we highlight similarities in the reasoning of children and adults across these three areas. In this process, we examine the different ways in which individuals engage multiple epistemologies and the circumstances that foster such an engagement. We conclude by drawing out the implications of this line of research for informal and formal science education. Most of the media focus on the evolution-creationist controversy tends to report it as a clash of belief systems, an either/or debate, with notable atheists, such as Dawkins, taking up one side of the debate and notable creationists, exemplified by the biblical literalists, taking the opposing view (Scott, 2005).
