Attitudes about evolution across countries : Gene Expression

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Nothing confusing about Russia at all.

Russian Orthodox Church quickly filled the ideological vacuum left after the fall of the USSR. There are whole channels in Russia dedicated to the Church, but almost nothing dedicated to the science. And Church also tries to mount an attack against secular education (and is succeeding so far).

Posted by: Alex Besogonov | July 6, 2009 8:26 AM

More proof that Agnosticism is the true way. No one really knows, they just act like they do. It's like a teacher writing 2 + 2 = ? on the blackboard, and 10 different people coming up with 10 different solutions. Wise up people, drop your fear of god and search for reality rather than some man made religion. How can anyone have the audacity to pretend they know the truth for even a split second? Every civilization on this planet has felt the need to create a deity of some sort to pray to. The Egyptians did it (sun gods, gods of the sea, etc.), the Romans did it, the Greeks did it, they did it in the far east, the Ancient Aztecs, Mayans...this list goes on. Each religion is different yet the people of these civilizations are laughably ignorant enough to continue to pretend to know they have the answers. This ignorance has caused war, stupidity, and great (laughable) ego. I think this chart is one of the millions of great demonstrations proving religion is nothing but a hoax to help human beings find answers to questions they can't really figure out. They used to think the Earth was flat people, this is the exact same thing.

Posted by: Kevin | July 6, 2009 8:34 AM

As interesting as this poll might be, it reminds me of CNN. The key fact is that opinion has absolutely nothing to to with the facts. Evolution is not a theory, it is a fact. An opinion is nothing more than a preference. Science is a tool for discovery and understanding. Opinions are a form of willful ignorance which is indistinguishable from stupidity.

Posted by: Charles J. Budde | July 6, 2009 9:23 AM

I have trouble with questions involving the word "God". Of course it is possible to believe in both a God and evolution, even if they are logically inconsistent, thanks to cognitive dissonance. It is also possible to believe in a deistic God which does not conflict with evolution at all, but that's not what most people would think of when surveyed. I'm not sure you're ever going to get much utility out of polls for this particular sort of question, thanks to the slipperiness of the words.

Posted by: Alex | July 6, 2009 11:05 AM

One strange thing here is in some countries how many people haven't even heard of Darwin. In Egypt only 38 percent have heard of Darwin and in South Africa only 27 percent. I don't know quite what is going on in those two cases since every other sampled country has a percentage well over 50%. It might be interesting to see if one gets similar data to the Egypt data in other Islamic or Arab countries.

Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky | July 6, 2009 6:42 PM

What is going on with Spain? Low 70s for heard of Darwin? Has the post-Franco wave of modernization still not reached large stretches of the country?

And India's low 60s answer on Darwin suggests that any comparison of India's other answers with the rest of the countries will be all but useless. I assume that the no answer on that question is the rural population. Can you estimate what would happen to the U.S. results if the most rural 25-30% were omitted?

Posted by: Ethan | July 7, 2009 12:03 PM