John over at Stranger Fruit has posted an infogram from Science, which ranks 34 countries acceptance of evolution. I have hijacked it below:
John notes that only Turkey has beaten us in evolutionary ignornace. But I immediately was struck by how similar this list looks to one I posted about last week regarding the happiest countries in the world! To summarize:
The 20 happiest nations in the World are:
1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. The Bahamas
6. Finland
7. Sweden
8. Bhutan
9. Brunei
10. Canada
11. Ireland
12. Luxembourg
13. Costa Rica
14. Malta
15. The Netherlands
16. Antigua and Barbuda
17. Malaysia
18. New Zealand
19. Norway
20. The Seychelles
Other notable results include:
23. USA
35. Germany
41. UK
62. France
82. China
90. Japan
125. India
167. Russia
The three least happy countries were:
176. Democratic Republic of the Congo
177. Zimbabwe
178. Burundi
Here's a graph of the countries' Happiness Rank vs. Acceptance of Evolution (note: there were 5 data points I couldn't verify and those countries were omitted.)
Not sure if there's a correleation, but makes you look twice, at least.
Comments
Not to quibble with statistical terminology, but you rather clearly demonstrated that there IS a correlation. There may not be CAUSATION, but there is definitely CORRELATION.
I suspect, however, that more modern societies are likely to both (a) have happier people because of the modernity and (b) teach evolution. I seriously doubt that happiness is caused by a belief in evolution.
Posted by: Jeremy @ What Now? | August 10, 2006 08:30 PM
I don't think its clearly demonstrated at all---I just plugged in the numbers into Excel. Its easy to argue that the 'happiness index' is biased in one way or another, thats why I was being cautious. Because I certainly know the difference between causation and correlation; and i'm not even going to assume that my number-plugging suggests a definitive correlation, let alone a causation. (I blasted the media for this very thing a few days ago).
Posted by: Shelley Batts | August 10, 2006 08:45 PM
Can you please explain a bit how much acces to education people have in US?. How can it be that most do not believe in evolution?.
e.g. if you ask in your university, will you get the same results?
Posted by: Blas | August 10, 2006 09:57 PM
Oh Blas, it is truly shameful isn't it?? Yeah, I'm sad to report such a pathetic finding. But, no, at the university level (at least any worth its salt) the acceptance rate would be much, much higher. The issue is that many people in America adhere to religion first, and fact and common sense second (if at all). Many religious leaders (uh, and I'm talking about right-wing Christians here) still preach that god made the earth in 7 days and that it is only several thousand years old. Yes, Blas, some people REALLY believe that. And evolution has become evil in their eyes; many in the science community see it as a "culture war" between religious bias and blindness and, well, science. The anti-evolution movement is called Intelligent Design (but I called them IDiots). Pharyngula does a great job debunking their silly theories and generally putting them in their place. I'd recommend checking it out, if only for the humor value.
Posted by: Shelley Batts | August 10, 2006 10:39 PM
Only thing I will add is that while Indians are very unhappy, we do just fine when it comes to evolution. For years I didn't realize that there was such a thing as a "debate" on evolution. Mendelian inheritance and Darwin's theories just made so much sense when we were taught those (I think it was 8th or 9th grade).
Posted by: Deepak | August 11, 2006 03:25 AM