Writing for The Atlantic, Robert Wright floated a too cute hypothesis (that Razib promptly undermined). The hypothesis, in essence, is that the militant atheism propagated by people like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers has reflexively pushed Christians, who feel under siege, into "anti-scientism" (as Wright phrases it). But as Myers and Razib both point out, perceptions haven't changed much among creationists and evolutionists, who are demographically distributed in the same way they were more than a decade ago.
The anti-scientism charge is what piqued my curiosity. Previously, we've seen that Republicans are more scientifically literate than Democrats are, with a glaring exception on the question of evolution. I wondered, beyond the Darwinian issue, how scientific literacy compares among those who believe in evolution and those who do not. To avoid racial confounding, only whites are considered. The sides are pretty evenly split on the dichotomously posed query, with 53.6% of the population asserting that humans evolved from other animals and 46.4% denying that this happened. The following table shows the percentages of evolutionists and creationists who correctly answered each of 15 simple science literacy items that were posed in 2006, 2008, and 2010*:
The stereotype of creationists as relatively ignorant of the basic tenets of science is a reasonably accurate one. The two exceptions are the question on astrology, with its own stereotypes of spiritual but not religious new age hippie chick adherents, and human reproduction, something creationists have a lot more firsthand experience with than evolutionists do (and anyway good liberal evolutionists are presumably loathe to admit to the truth of this horridly patriarchal aspect of human biology).
GSS variables used: RACECEN1(1), EVOLVED(1)(2), ASTROSCI, SCIBNFTS, EXPDESGN, ODDS1, HOTCORE, RADIOACT, BOYORGRL, LASERS, ELECTRON, VIRUSES, CONDRIFT, EARTHSUN, SOLARREV, EATGM(1-2)(3), ICESHEET
* Admittedly, the wording for some of these questions is suboptimal. Instead of mentioning the X or Y chromosome passed on by the father, we get "gene", for example. But the good needn't be the enemy of the perfect!
The anti-scientism charge is what piqued my curiosity. Previously, we've seen that Republicans are more scientifically literate than Democrats are, with a glaring exception on the question of evolution. I wondered, beyond the Darwinian issue, how scientific literacy compares among those who believe in evolution and those who do not. To avoid racial confounding, only whites are considered. The sides are pretty evenly split on the dichotomously posed query, with 53.6% of the population asserting that humans evolved from other animals and 46.4% denying that this happened. The following table shows the percentages of evolutionists and creationists who correctly answered each of 15 simple science literacy items that were posed in 2006, 2008, and 2010*:
| Item | Evolutionists | Creationists |
| Astrology is not scientific | 70.1% | 73.2% |
| The benefits of science exceed the harms | 82.2% | 73.8% |
| Understands the need for control groups in scientific testing | 85.9% | 80.7% |
| Demonstrates a basic understanding of probability | 93.7% | 91.4% |
| The earth's core is hot | 95.6% | 93.9% |
| Not all radioactivity is man-made | 87.9% | 82.0% |
| The father's gene decides the sex of a baby | 72.1% | 80.0% |
| Lasers are not made by condensing sound waves | 76.7% | 70.2% |
| Electrons are smaller than atoms | 77.5% | 70.2% |
| Antibiotics don't kill viruses | 66.4% | 61.1% |
| Continental drift has occurred and continues to occur | 95.6% | 84.1% |
| The earth revolves around the sun | 85.8% | 77.5% |
| It takes the earth one year to revolves around the sun | 82.0% | 74.1% |
| Willing to eat genetically modified foods | 77.7% | 64.2% |
| The north pole sits on a sheet of ice | 71.3% | 53.7% |
The stereotype of creationists as relatively ignorant of the basic tenets of science is a reasonably accurate one. The two exceptions are the question on astrology, with its own stereotypes of spiritual but not religious new age hippie chick adherents, and human reproduction, something creationists have a lot more firsthand experience with than evolutionists do (and anyway good liberal evolutionists are presumably loathe to admit to the truth of this horridly patriarchal aspect of human biology).
GSS variables used: RACECEN1(1), EVOLVED(1)(2), ASTROSCI, SCIBNFTS, EXPDESGN, ODDS1, HOTCORE, RADIOACT, BOYORGRL, LASERS, ELECTRON, VIRUSES, CONDRIFT, EARTHSUN, SOLARREV, EATGM(1-2)(3), ICESHEET
* Admittedly, the wording for some of these questions is suboptimal. Instead of mentioning the X or Y chromosome passed on by the father, we get "gene", for example. But the good needn't be the enemy of the perfect!
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