A whole pile of Evolution Education news

The annual Gallup Poll on how dumb Americans are has come out, and they got less dumb.

A new Gallup poll on public opinion about evolution hints at a slightly higher rate of acceptance of evolution in the United States over the years. Asked in December 2010 "[w]hich of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings," 38% of the respondents accepted "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process," 16% accepted "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process," and 40% accepted "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."


Details here.

The NCSE has compiled a year-end list of the top ten stories related to evolution (vis-a-vis evo-creo and education) of the year. Check it out.

We just passed the fifth anniversary (Dec. 17th) of theKitzmiller vs. Dover decision. Here's a review of what PZ Myers calls "Kitzmas" ... the annual celebration of this event. And, another story about Kitzmas is here.

These are all courtesy of the National Center for Science Education.

More like this

A poll released last week found that a substantial chunk of Americans think that humans were created 10,000 years ago, and evolved over millions of years. Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll explains that and other insights by pulling together their data on public views of evolution…
Attention conservation notice: 3000 words about how smart people who ought to know better are reading way too much into a poll. Last May, NCSE reported on a poll on evolution conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University. The results were, to my eye, in line with most of the other polling out…
Jerry Coyne has a post up reporting on new polling data on science and religion coming out of Virginia Commonwealth University. Jerry notes that the numbers for the evolution questions are broadly consistent with what past surveys have found. I mostly agree, but there was one number that jumped…
A couple weeks ago, Fox News released a new poll asking about evolution and creationism. It didn't strike me as especially noteworthy, though it does show a statistically significant rise in acceptance of evolution (21% think "the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientist" is "…

Less dumb, but still awfully dumb. It's depressing.

Until just a few years ago, I'd been under the delusion that creationism was almost as much of a fringe position among the general public as it was scientifically. Sure, I knew that most people were still religious, but I assumed that they were theistic evolutionists (which was the way I'd been raised myself). It was shocking when I learned the real situation. It's as if half of the adult population actually believed in Santa Claus. (Hell, maybe they do.)

The annual Gallup Poll on how dumb Americans are has come out, and they got less dumb.

Oh god, Rupert Murdoch is going to go ballistic - this could easily cost Roger Ailes his job.

By Phillip IV (not verified) on 21 Dec 2010 #permalink

Accommodationism rul3z! Well, I expect to see that claim soon. See, "Rockstars of Science" wasn't even printed that long ago ... proof! proof!

By MadScientist (not verified) on 23 Dec 2010 #permalink

Oh dear. 16% is an IMPROVEMENT?

Very much "Oh dear".