The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States.
Excerpt:
The concept of the evolution of humans from earlier forms of life is unacceptable to biblical literalists and causes concern even among some holders of less conservative religious views. Catholics and mainstream Protestants generally accept variations of a theological view known as theistic evolution, which views evolution as the means by which God brought about humans, as well as other organisms. Evolution is nonetheless problematic to some of these nonliteralist Christians, because it implies a more distant or less personal God (1–3). Efforts to insert “intelligent design” into school science curricula seek to retain the divine design of humans while remaining agnostic on earlier creationist beliefs in a young Earth and the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs (2, 4).
Beginning in 1985, national samples of U.S. adults have been asked whether the statement, “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals,” is true or false, or whether the respondent is not sure or does not know. We compared the results of these surveys with survey data from nine European countries in 2002, surveys in 32 European countries in 2005, and a national survey in Japan in 2001 (5). Over the past 20 years, the percentage of U.S. adults accepting the idea of evolution has declined from 45% to 40% and the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution declined from 48% to 39%. The percentage of adults who were not sure about evolution increased from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005. After 20 years of public debate, the public appears to be divided evenly in terms of accepting or rejecting evolution, with about one in five adults still undecided or unaware of the issue. This pattern is consistent with a number of sporadic national newspapers surveys reported in recent years (6-10).
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About a third of American adults firmly rejected evolution, and only 14% of adults thought that evolution is “definitely true.”
Treating the “probably” and “not sure” categories as varying degrees of uncertainty, ~55% of American adults have held a tentative view about evolution for the last decade.
This pattern is different from that seen in Europe and Japan. Looking first at the simpler true-false question, our analysis found that significantly (at the 0.01 to 0.05 level by difference of proportions) (11) more adults in Japan and 32 European countries accepted the
concept of evolution than did American adults (see figure, right). Only Turkish adults were less likely to accept the concept of evolution than American adults. In Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and France, 80% or more of adults accepted the concept of evolution, as did 78% of Japanese adults. >>> more
