All of the other science bloggers are talking about the finding that the British might be more Creation-friendly than we’d have thought. My first thought is that we need to be careful about the survey. But my second thought is to remind myself that a 1988 survey (page 8 of the PDF) found that “…one-third of British adults understood that the Earth rotates around the Sun once a year….” vs. “…half of US adults know that the Earth rotates around the Sun once a year….” (year 2000 for the American survey). The difference in anti-evolutionary activism in the two nations is, I suspect, a function of British class structure and popular deference to elites.
Anyway, I’m going to snag some data from religious tolerance on evolution internationally:
Q: “In your opinion, how true is this? …Human beings developed from earlier species of animals..”
Nation & percentage answering affirmative
United States < 35.4
N. Ireland 51.5
Philippines 60.9
Ireland 60.1
Poland 35.4
Italy 65.2
New Zealand 66.3
Israel 56.9
Norway 65
Great Britain 76.7
Netherlands 58.6
W. Germany 72.7
Russia 41.4
Slovenia 60.7
Hungary 62.8
E. Germany 81.6
Update: Thanks to Dan for the correlation matrix for the data above below the fold….
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