ABSTRACT
Given the reputation of the United States as a world leader in science, it is ironic that its scientifi c establishment is experiencing a public backlash. The most acrimonious manifestation of this backlash has been the U.S. public’s reaction to the Darwinian theory of evolution. With only 40% of the U.S. public accepting evolutionary explanations for human origins, the United States ranks second to last in acceptance rate among 34 industrialized nations. The rate in most of Europe, in contrast, ranges from 70% to 80%, whereas Japan’s is 78% (Miller, Scott, & Okamoto, 2006). Explanations for this phenomenon abound, ranging from religious belief to poor scientifi c training to politicization. According to Mazur’s (2005) analysis of several national U.S. samples, Christian religiosity, especially fundamentalism, signifi cantly outweighs other contributing factors, including educational level and political orientation. Further, after controlling for these factors, including religiosity, Mazur (2005) found that acceptance of evolution was not independently related to other measures of science knowledge, dogmatism (closed-mindedness), geographical locale, or ethnicity.
