Via Stranger Fruit, Panda's Thumb, and elsewhere in the blogosphere comes this Science paper discussing attitudes regarding evolution in a number of countries, including the United States. As noted in John's title, the U.S. comes in second....from the bottom. Only Turkey has a greater proprtion of citizens that doubt evolution.
People sometimes ask why I bother even writing about "intelligent design" and other such supposed "challenges" to established scientific theories. Evolutionary biology is so overwhelmingly supported by the evidence, why even take the time to address those who deny it? Data like that presented in this survey is a big reason. We still have a long way to go toward getting the public to accept the findings of science. Perhaps it's a fruitless endeavor, as the paper notes the correlation between fundamentalism and denial of evolution (again, a completely expected association). So even though all the scientific evidence in the world won't convince those who base their understanding of evolution on their religion instead of on the data, I still think it's highly important to emphasize and re-emphasize the centrality of evolution to the science of biology, and to shoot down the dubious arguments of the evolution deniers whenever possible. Perhaps someday Enlightment-era thinking will return to the United States.
I was going to make a righteous smug remark, as we Canadians are fond of making, but Canada is not on the list. It would be unfortunate then if we were even lower than the U.S., but I'm pretty sure that's not the case and we're really closer to Finland or Portugal in that regard. Still, you just have to shake your head at the tenacity of the faith-based "sciences" in America.
my post on this survey merely posted a line from The Young Ones.
Rik: Honestly, I don't know why I bother, sometimes.
Viv: I don't know why you bother ever!
Dave S. - well, keep in mind that recent grant incident (on the project to determine the effects of ID "preaching" on canadians - would the ID videos and books change someone's views if not presented to them through a church environment which is common in rural america). the board responsible turned down the project not because the proposed methodology was wrong in and of itself, but that it relied on an implied assumption that "most" canadians accept evolution to start with.
this justification was badly explained at the time by the board, thus implying that the board itself didn't accept evolution which wasn't the case and caused a lot of accusations and confusion. it was just that the board wasn't sure that such an assumption was correct to form the basis of an experiment.
a few weeks later, Toronto Newspapers started printing some "evolution can't possibly be right" letters to the editor, all full of the same creationist canards we've been dealing with for decades. as PZ posted at the time, "we're sorry, canada, we didn't know it was contagious." :)