How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [152]
On a positive note the survey revealed that “for the first time, a majority (53 percent) of NSF survey respondents answered ‘true’ to the statement ‘human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,’ bringing the United States more in line with other industrialized countries in response to this question.” The report also noted, however, that the teaching of creationism still finds majority support, in that “although a majority (60 percent) of people surveyed in a Gallup poll were opposed to the Kansas State Board of Education’s decision to delete evolution from the state’s science standards (a decision that was later reversed), more than two-thirds favored teaching both evolution and creationism in U.S. public school classrooms.”
We can glean a deeper cause of this contradiction in another statistic: 70 percent of Americans still do not understand the scientific process, defined in the study as grasping three concepts: probability, the experimental method, and hypothesis testing. One solution is more and better science education, as indicated by the fact that 53 percent of Americans with a high level of science education (nine or more high school and college science/math courses) understand the scientific process, compared to 38 percent with a middle level (six to eight such courses) science education, and 17 percent with a low level (less than five such courses). The NSF report concluded:
Although more than 50 percent of NSF survey respondents in 2001 had some understanding of probability, and more than 40 percent were familiar with how an experiment is conducted, only one-third could adequately explain what it means to study something scientifically. Understanding how ideas are investigated and analyzed is a sure sign of scientific literacy. Such critical thinking skills can also prove advantageous in making well-informed choices at the ballot box and in other daily living activities.
GOD AND EVOLUTION
The key here is teaching how science works, not just what science has discovered. An article published in Skeptic, Volume 9, Number 3, presents the results of a study that found no correlation between science knowledge (facts about the world) and paranormal beliefs. The authors, W. Richard Walker, Steven J. Hoekstra, and Rodney J. Vogl, concluded: “Students that scored well on these [science knowledge] tests were no more or less skeptical of pseudoscientific claims than students that scored very poorly. Apparently, the students were not able to apply their scientific knowledge to evaluate these pseudoscientific claims. We suggest that this inability stems in part from the way that science is traditionally presented to students: Students are taught what to think but not how to think.”
In no area of human knowledge is this observation more true, and critical thinking in such desperate demand, than when scientific claims appear to conflict with religious tenets. Here I am thinking of the creation-evolution controversy, which continues to inflame many religious Americans as they try to come to grips with the findings of modern science. (Indeed, the day I finished writing this chapter, the Cobb County, Georgia, board of education voted to include a sticker in all public high school biology textbooks indicating that evolution is just one theory among many to explain the development of life, and that creationism and Intelligent Design Theory should also be included in the curriculum of biology classes.) In March of 2001 the Gallup News Service reported the results of a survey that found 45 percent of Americans agree with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present