One hundred years after a Tennessee teacher named John Scopes started a legal battle over what the state\u2019s schools can teach children, Americans are still divided over evolution.<\/p>\n
Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee law\u00a0by teaching evolution<\/a>, in a highly publicised July 1925 trial that led to national debate over evolution and education. The trial tested whether a law introduced that year really could punish teachers over evolution lessons. It could and did: Scopes was fined US$100 (\u00a374).<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the weird part: while Americans remain deeply divided about whether humans evolved from earlier species, across the Atlantic British people had largely settled this question decades before the Scopes trial.<\/p>\n According to thinktank\u00a0Pew Research Center<\/a> data from 2020, only 64 per cent of Americans accept that \u201chumans and other living things have evolved over time\u201d. Meanwhile, 73 per cent of Britons are fine with the idea that they share a common ancestor with chimpanzees. That nine-percentage-point gap might not sound like much, but it represents millions of people who think Darwin was peddling fake news.<\/p>\n From 1985 to 2010, Americans were in what researchers call a statistical dead heat\u00a0between acceptance and rejection<\/a>\u00a0of evolution \u2013 which is academic speak for people couldn\u2019t decide if we were descended from apes or Adam and Eve.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where things get psychologically fascinating. Research into\u00a0misinformation and cognitive biases<\/a>\u00a0suggests that fundamentalism operates on a principle known as motivated reasoning. This means selectively interpreting evidence to reach predetermined conclusions. And a\u00a02018 review<\/a>\u00a0of social and computer science research also found that fake news seems to spread because it confirms what people already want to believe.<\/p>\n Evolution denial may work the same way. Religious fundamentalism is what researchers call\u00a0\u201cthe strongest predictor\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for rejection of evolution.\u00a0A 2019<\/a>\u00a0study of 900 participants found that belief in fake news headlines was associated with delusionality, dogmatism, religious fundamentalism and reduced analytic thinking.<\/p>\n High personal religiosity,\u00a0as seen in the United States<\/a>, reinforced by communities of like-minded believers, can create resistance to evolutionary science. This pattern is pronounced among Southern Baptists \u2013 the largest Protestant denomination in the US \u2013 where\u00a061 per cent believe the Bible is the literal word of God<\/a>, compared to 31 per cent of Americans overall. The persistence of this conflict is fuelled by organised creationist movements<\/a>\u00a0that reinforce religious scepticism.<\/p>\n Brain imaging studies<\/a>\u00a0show that people with fundamentalist beliefs seem to have reduced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex \u2013 the brain region responsible for cognitive flexibility and analytical thinking. When this area is damaged or less active, people become more prone to accepting claims without sufficient evidence and show increased resistance to changing their beliefs when presented with contradictory information.\u00a0Studies of brain-injured patients<\/a>\u00a0show damage to prefrontal networks that normally help us question information may lead to increased fundamentalist beliefs and reduced scepticism.<\/p>\n Fundamentalist psychology helps explain the US position in international evolution acceptance surveys. In a 2006 study, of over 33,00 people\u00a0from 34 countries<\/a>, only Turkey ranked lower than the US, with about 27 per cent accepting evolution compared to America\u2019s 40 per cent at the time. Among the developed nations surveyed, the US consistently ranks near the bottom \u2013 a pattern that persists<\/a>\u00a0in more recent international comparisons.<\/p>\n Research shows<\/a>\u00a0that political polarisation on evolution has historically been much stronger in the US than in Europe or Japan, where the issue rarely becomes a campaign talking point. In the US,\u00a0anti-evolution bills<\/a>\u00a0are still being introduced in\u00a0state legislatures<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the United Kingdom, belief in evolution became accepted among respectable clergymen<\/a> around 1896, according to church historian Owen Chadwick\u2019s analysis of Victorian Christianity. But why did British religious institutions embrace science while American ones declared war?<\/p>\n The answer lies in different approaches to intellectual challenges. British Anglicanism\u00a0has a centuries-old tradition<\/a>\u00a0of seeking a \u201cvia media\u201d \u2013 a middle way between extremes \u2013 that allowed church leaders to accommodate new ideas without abandoning core beliefs. Historian Peter documented how\u00a0British religious leaders<\/a>\u00a0actively worked to reconcile science and religion, developing theological frameworks that embraced scientific discoveries as revealing God\u2019s methods rather than contradicting divine authority.<\/p>\n British Anglicanism\u00a0has a centuries-old tradition\u00a0of seeking a \u201cvia media\u201d \u2013 a middle way between extremes \u2013 that allowed church leaders to accommodate new ideas without abandoning core beliefs<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anglican bishops and scholars tended to treat evolution as God\u2019s method of creation rather than a threat to faith itself. The Church of England\u2019s hierarchical structure meant that when educated clergy accepted evolution, the institutional framework often followed suit.\u00a0A 2024 paper argued that<\/a>\u00a0many UK church leaders still view science and religion as complementary rather than conflicting.<\/p>\n The British experience proves it\u2019s possible to\u00a0reconcile science and faith<\/a>. But changing American minds requires understanding that evolution acceptance isn\u2019t really about biology \u2014 it\u2019s about identity, belonging, and the fundamental question of who gets to define truth. People don\u2019t reject evolution because they\u2019ve carefully studied the evidence. They reject it because it threatens their identity. This creates a context where\u00a0education alone<\/a>\u00a0can\u2019t overcome deeply held convictions.<\/p>\n Misinformation intervention research<\/a>\u00a0suggests that inoculation strategies, such as highlighting the scientific consensus on climate change, work better than debunking individual articles. But evolution education needs to be sensitive.\u00a0Consensus messaging<\/a> helps, but only when it doesn\u2019t threaten people\u2019s core identities. For example, framing evolution as a function of “how” life develops, rather than “why” it exists, allows for people to maintain religious belief while accepting the scientific evidence for natural selection.<\/p>\n People\u2019s views can change. A review published in 2024, analysed data which followed the same Gen X people in the US over 33 years. It found that, as they grew up, people developed more acceptance of evolution, though typically\u00a0because of factors such as education and obtaining university degrees<\/a>. But people who were taught at a private school\u00a0seem less likely<\/a>\u00a0to become more accepting of evolution as they aged.<\/p>\n As we face new waves of scientific misinformation, the century since the Scopes trial teaches us that evidence alone won\u2019t necessarily change people\u2019s minds. Understanding the psychology of belief might be our best hope for evolving past our own cognitive limitations.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on<\/em> The Conversation<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Image: The Cleveland Museum of Art<\/a> (Unsplash); Julie Ricard<\/a> (Unsplash).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One hundred years after a Tennessee teacher named John Scopes started a legal battle over what the state\u2019s schools can<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":826,"featured_media":15648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[686,786,513,403,332],"coauthors":[790],"class_list":["post-15641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-health","tag-christian-fundamentalism","tag-creationism","tag-evolution","tag-psychology","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/826"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15641"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15649,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641\/revisions\/15649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15641"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}