How religiosity and science literacy interact: Evolution & science literacy part 2
This is the second of two posts on science literacy and evolution.
And religion.
And liberal democratic society as the naturally congenial but sometimes precariously raucous—or maybe better, simultaneously congenial and precarious because naturally raucous—home for science.
And how the common misunderstanding of what public “disbelief” in “evolution” truly signifies can actually interfere with popular dissemination of scientific knowledge. Plus compromise norms of respect for cultural pluralism that are essential to the practice of liberal democracy.
See? Get it?
Okay, well, in the last post I described the vast body of long established but persistently--weirdly--ignored work that social scientists have amassed on the relationship between public “disbelief” in evolution and public understanding of evolution and other basic elements of science.
That work shows that there isn't any relationship. What people say they “believe” about evolution is a measure of who they are, culturally. It’s not a measure of what they know about what’s known to science.
Indeed, many people who say they “believe” in evolution don’t have the foggiest idea how the modern synthesis hangs together. Those who say they “disbelieve” are not any less likely to understand evolutionary theory--but they aren't any more more likely to either.
That so few members of the public have a meaningful understanding of the workings of genetic variance, random mutation, and natural selection (the core elements of the modern synthesis) is a shame, and definitely a matter of concern for the teaching of science education.
But it’s a problem about what people “know” and not what they say they “believe.” What people say they "believe" and what they "know" about evolution are vastly different things. That's what the ample scientific evidence on public understandings of science show.
In this post I want to add a modest increment of additional evidence corroborating this important point.
The evidence has to do specifically with the relationship between religion, science literacy, and belief in evolution.
The evidence is from a survey of 2,000 US adults recruited and stratified in a manner designed to assure national representativeness.
The survey instrument included the NSF science indicators.
It also contained various measures of religiosity, including regularity of church attendance; regularity of prayer; and perceived “importance of God” in one’s life. These cohered in a manner that enabled them to be formed into a reliable “religiosity” scale.
And the survey contained an item that Gallup and other pollsters routinely use to measure the public’s “beliefs” about evolution.
What do these data show?
Well, I’ll state in summary form what I regard as the findings of interest, and then supply the supporting details:
1. Neither the “Evolution” nor the “Big Bang” items in the NSF’s "Science Indicators" battery can plausibly be viewed as reliably measuring “scientific literacy” in subjects who are even modestly religious.
2. When subjects who are highly science literate but highly religious answer “False” to the NSF Indicator’s Evolution item, their response furnishes no reason to infer that they lack knowledge of the basic elements of the best scientific understanding of evolution.
3. For respondents who are below average in religiosity, a high score in “science literacy” predicts a higher probability of “believing” in “Naturalistic Evolution”—and so does a low score!
4. For those who are above average in religiosity, a high score in science literacy doesn’t predict a higher probability of believing in Naturalistic Evolution. But it does predict a higher probability of believing in Theistic Evolution.
5. A higher score in science literacy predicts a lower probability of believing in Young Earth Creationism—whether respondents are below or above average in religiosity.
Okay. Here are the specifics.
1. In general, religiosity (measured, as I said, by aggregating items on church attendance, frequency of prayer, and perceived personal importance of God) is correlated negatively with science literacy.
But the effect is modest. The large overlap in the density distribution plots to the left makes it clear that the portions of population “above” and “below average” in religiosity (“AARs” and “BARs,” let’s call them) both comprise individuals of a wide range of scores on the NSF science literacy battery.
Or at least they do when one leaves Evolution and Big Bang out of the tally, as the NSF itself decided to do in 2010, and & as I have here. To make the science literacy scale more reliable and discerning, I’ve added items from the Indicators' “science process” battery, which tests knowledge relating to probability and validity of experimental methods.
Consider, though, how AARs and BARs scoring in the top 50% of the science literacy test so measured respond to Evolution and Big Bang:
The difference in the percentages of the two moderately “science literate” groups who answer “true” to these questions is stunningly high.
Now one can use even more intricate statistical tests—ones involving, say, Cronbach’s alpha, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling—to convincingly show that Evolution and Big Bang are not measuring the same latent proficiency in acquiring scientific knowledge as are the remaining NSF Indicator items.
But nothing more intricate than this discrepancy in the performance of modestly science literate AARs and BARs is necessary to see that these two items aren’t a valid measure of science literacy in the former.
2. The NSF Indicators test of science literacy is far from perfect, but I think it’s reasonable to infer that people who do above average have acquired more understanding of basic science knowledge than those who score below average.
I doubt that a majority of BARs who score in the top 50% of the NSF Indicator battery (sans Evolution and Big Bang and avec the process items) know the basic elements of the theory of evolution, including the role that genetic variance, random mutation, and natural selection play in it.
But I think more of them are likely to understand those things than BARs who score in the bottom 50%.
By the same token, there’s reason to believe that AARs who score in the top 50% on the NSF science literacy test are more likely to have acquired an elementary knowledge of evolutionary theory than those—BARs or AARs—who score in the bottom 50%.
Nothing in how the above-average science literacy AARs answer the Evolution item furnishes any reason to doubt this. How they respond to that item, I’ve just pointed out, is not, for them at least, a measure of what they know about science. And in any case, as has been established by researchers on multiple occasions, there’s zero correlation between whether one says one “believes in” evolution and whether can give a passable account of the modern synthesis.
3. Now let’s consider what we can learn from the responses to the “popular opinion poll” item on beliefs in evolution.
That item asks respondents to indicate “which one of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings—”
- Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process
- Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process; or
- God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."
Let’s call these responses “Theistic Evolution,” “Naturalistic Evolution,” and "Young Earth Creationism," respectively.
Theistic Evolution was the most popular response but by was supported by only a plurality (38%). Young Earth Creationism was second and Naturalistic (or "Godless") Evolution third but the proportions who selected each differed by only a slight amount (32% vs. 29%, respectively).
These numbers, by the way, differ a bit from what Gallup tends to report. The percent selecting Theistic Evolution is in consistent with that. But Godless Evolution runs closer to Young Earth Creationism than it does in Gallup polls.
What to make of this? Well, I’ll write a blog soon about the validity of on-line public opinion samples. But suffice it to say that based on the predictive accuracy of surveys conducted by YouGov, the premier on-line survey firm that recruited the sample for this study, and surveys conducted by Gallup in the 2010 and 2012 elections, YouGov is probably getting closer to the “true” general population values.
What we are interested in, though, is how science literacy and religiosity influence selection of these responses.
Consider first the relationship between these responses & science literacy.
Whoa ... the Jesus fish symbol popped out of my regression!
Maybe not shocking but note that support for Naturalistic peaks at only about 55% even among the most science literate. The relationship between support and for that position and science literacy, moreover, is “U”-shaped—higher at both the low and high ends. This relationship was confirmed by a multinomial logistic regression with appropriate quadratic terms; the fitted values from that regression are what I’m graphing (these plots are very true to what one would see in the “raw” data).
Now add religiosity. The following plots contrast the probabilities that AARs and BARs will select one or another of the response to the popular pollster item. They are derived from the same multinomial logistic regression, which confirmed that the impact of science literacy on the probability of selecting one response or another varies depending on level of religiosity.
It’s clear that the “U”-shaped relationship between science literacy and believing in Naturalistic Evolution is being driven by BARs.
In other words, BARs are more likely to believe in Naturalistic Evolution as they become either extremely science literate or extremely science illiterate!
Is this a surprise? Well, I wasn’t expecting this. My inspection of the data was pretty much exploratory, without strong hypotheses.
But I was reminded of a finding in what I regard as one of the very best studies of how high-quality instruction in the teaching of evolutionary theory generates improvements in knowledge but not changes in belief.
In the study, Anton Lawson and collaborators found that high school students, particularly those scoring highest in critical reasoning skills, readily acquired knowledge of various aspects of evolution through instruction, but that acquisition of such knowledge did not produce a corresponding shift in belief among the students who began as nonbelievers.
Nevertheless, the subgroup of such students who did back away from two particular beliefs hostile to naturalistic evolution (that the “living world is controlled by a force greater than humans” and that “all events in nature occur as part of a predetermined master plan”) consisted of the students who scored the lowest in critical reasoning skills.
Speculating on why, Lawson et al. noted that “experience tells us that people change their beliefs for other than rational reasons. For example, hearing the opinion of an acknowledged authority figure could cause one to change a belief. Perhaps intuitive [students] are more likely than reflective students to change their beliefs for this reason.”
Lawson et al. don’t themselves explicitly suggest this, but a consistent conjecture might be that students who are higher in critical reasoning skills might be more inclined to push back on identity-threatening “beliefs” (even while taking on more knowledge) than those who are less reflective. That would be consistent with findings that motivated reasoning can be amplified by science literacy and cognitive reflection.
Someone should do a study to test that hypothesis!
4. For AARs, in contrast, an increase in science literacy does not predict belief in Naturalistic Evolution. On the contrary, it seems to predict a slight decrease, although the effect is pretty much zero for all but those AARs whose scores are quite low.
So much for the idea that “disbelief” in evolution is a sign of low science literacy. It isn’t. “Disbelief” is just as consistent with being high in science literacy as low.
The only thing “disbelief” in Naturalistic Evolution reliably signifies is that one is religious. This is consistent with the hypothesis that evolution “beliefs” are actually measures of cultural identity (as reflected in religiosity).
This conclusion is strongly corroborated by the relationship between science literacy and the increased probability of believing in Theistic Evolution among AARs. Offered the opportunity—as they aren’t in the NSF Science Indicators science knowledge battery—to select a position simultaneously consistent with “belief” in evolution and religious identity, the most science literate AARS grab hold of it!
5. Indeed, those same subjects—AARs who score high in science literacy—are less likely to espouse Young Earth Creationism than their less science literate counterparts.
What does this tell us? I suppose other interpretations are possible, but I’d say that AARs high in science literacy are in fact eager to affirm their “belief” in evolution, so long as they can be presented with a means of doing so that doesn’t denigrate their cultural identities.
Not surprisingly, BARs also less likely to express support for Young Earth Creationism as they become more science literate.
Support for Young Earth Creationism is associated disproportionately with being simultaneously above average in religiosity and below average in science literacy.
* * * * *
Some concluding thoughts:
1. “Disbelief” in evolution doesn’t reflect a deficiency in science literacy or shortcomings in science education in our society.
I think it is very reasonable to think members of our society are not as science literate as they should be, and also that our education system must do better in imparting scientific knowledge to citizens generally.
But it’s wrong to think that the level of “disbelief” in evolution is evidence of those things. It’s wrong to think that because that view is contrary to empirical evidence.
The evidence that many researchers have compiled and that I’ve added to in a very modest way here show overwhelmingly that an individual's unwillingness to profess “belief” in evolution doesn't indicate science illiteracy or her unfamiliarity with the rudiments of evolutionary theory.
It measures her expression of her cultural identity. What saying “I don’t believe in evolution” means, culturally speaking, is that one belongs to a community whose members subscribe to a particular set of understanding on best way to live.
2. Those dedicated to the critical task of promoting scientific literacy, including public knowledge of the best scientific understanding of evolution, should not be focusing on what percentage of the population says they “believe” in evolution.
They shouldn’t be focusing on that because that information tells us nothing about how much scientific knowledge or even knowledge of evolution the public has. Those who want to test how well society is doing in imparting knowledge of evolution should be measuring instead what fraction of the population can give a cogent account of genetic variance, random mutation, and natural selection. It’s pitifully small, among both those who say they “believe” in evolution and those who say they don’t.
But even more important, those who want to promote public acquisition of scientific knowledge should avoid making professions of “belief” in evolution their aim because doing so is much more likely to deter than promote acquisition of basic scientific knowledge.
People who have a religious identity—who include plenty of science literate people and people capable of becoming even more so—see profession of “belief” as denigrating their cultural identities. Naturally, then, they will see the demand that they not only learn but publicly affirm their "belief” in evolution as an attack on their community by members of another who harbor a shared understanding of the best life hostile to theirs.
They’ll resent that. And with good reason. It's appropriate--absolutely essential, even--that a liberal democracy oblige those who furnish the public good of education to impart to people of all cultural identities the best available understanding of how the universe works, including the career of life on earth. But citizens who make it their business to force others who have cultural views different from theirs to submit to purely symbolic rituals of identity-abnegation are engaged in a noxious, fundamentally illiberal form of conduct.
Such behavior, moreover, predictably breeds motivated resistance to acquiring knowledge of what science knows. Fear of the loss of status associated with "assenting" to facts symbolically linked to the identity of a rival cultural group is exactly what blocks citizens from converging on the best scientific evidence on issues climate change, nuclear power, the HPV vaccine, and other culturally contested policies.
In their study of how effectively imparting knowledge of evolutionary theory does not produce “belief,” Anton Lawson & William Worsnop conclude:
Of course, every teacher who has addressed the issue of special creation and evolution in the classroom already knows that highly religious students are not likely to change their belief in special creation as a consequence of relative brief lessons on evolution. Our suggestion is that it is best not to try to do so, not directly at least. Rather, our experience and results suggest to us that a more prudent plan would be to utilize instruction time, much as we did, to explore the alternatives, their predicted consequences, and the evidence in a hypothetico-deductive way in an effort to provoke argumentation and the use of reflective thought. Thus, the primary aims of the lesson should not be to convince students of one belief or another, but, instead, to help students (a) gain a better understanding of how scientists compare alternative hypotheses, their predicated consequences, and the evidence to arrive at belief and (b) acquire skill in the use of this important reasoning pattern-a pattern that appears to be necessary for independent learning and critical thought.
This is a sensible prescription for those who (very appropriately!) want to promote the widest dissemination of basic science knowledge in the general public.
But it also happens to be a prescription consistent with the basic liberal injunction to respect the entitlement of individual citizens to freely use their own reason both to understand what is known by science and to decide for themselves what constitutes a virtuous life.
The convergence of the two is not any sort of accident. It reflects a deep truth about the reciprocal affinity of science and political liberalism.
Hey, everybody, LISTEN UP!!
My blog post incorrectly reported a finding from one of the studies I described.
The study, a really great one, is
I stated that
“Lawson and collaborators found that students who were the least reflective (as measured by a critical reasoning skills test) were the most likely to accept conventional scientific claims about the workings of evolution, although they were in fact not capable of furnishing cogent accounts of evolution or learning much upon instruction.
“Belief in” evolution, on their account at least, was more reliably associated with uncomprehending acceptance of positions presented as “correct” than with learning of evolutionary theory on the part of those most disposed to use high-quality critical thinking.
That’s definitely not right!!
In the study in question, Lawson et al. found, consistent with previous ones, that the quality of cognitive reflection, as measured by a critical reasoning skills test, is positively associated with beliefs in evolution.
The findings from the Lawson et al. study that I had in mind & that I meant to emphasize were that
(1) nonbeliever students who were high in cognitive reflection acquired knowledge of evolution without a corresponding change in belief; and that
(2) students who were low in cognitive reflection did change their beliefs in some respects but without learning as much.
That's still the part that I want to emphasize, in fact, & I've corrected the text of the post to reflect them.
But I also want to be sure my inexcusably sloppy wording doesn't leave people w/ the wrong impression about what the study found on belief in evolution & cognitive reflection generally.
Again, critical reasoning skills were positively correlated with belief in evolution in the students in their sample -- in addition to being predictive of the ability to acquire knowledge relating to evolution by students who started as nonbelievers and remained so after instruction.
I need to reflect more on the wording of my blogs to be sure I don't make mistakes of this sort (I also happen to believe in evolution, but I'm an N of 1, so don't tell me that refutes Lawson et al.'s finding on the link between reflection & belief).
Reader Comments (40)
A question:
I suppose it's in there somewhere (too much there to put in this tiny brain and not enough time to even try)... but wonder of those who are "least reflective" would also be the most likely to accept conventional religious claims (such as that the Earth is 6,000 years old),. Doesn't this point you made essentially only tell us that those who are least reflective are least reflective?
IMV, they should be measuring what fraction of the population is able to articulate viewpoints on both sides of the debate, reflect on those viewpoints, and articulate their own, well-supported viewpoint (which would not at all need to fit into an either/or framework). Merely being able to give a cogent account of those phenomena you describe is not enough, IMO.
Along those lines:
I think this is unfortunate wording . The contrast to helping students (a), and (b), is not just trying to convince students of one viewpoint or the other. The contrast to (a) and (b) would also include a didactic instruction on the workings of evolution w/o requiring students to actively engage with the material. Such methodology should be included in what comes before the "but."
That is a nitpick, I admit - but one problem with our traditional instructional paradigm is that if often does not recognize, and make explicit, the difference I'm describing.
This analysis is great, but it seems to me the science literacy measurements are problematic at the top end of the scale. In the first figure (a smoothed histogram?) we see that the curves stop on the right side of the graph without having gone back down to zero. This means there a substantial % of people are getting the maximum score on the test, i.e. the test fails to differentiate properly at the high end of the scale. But it is precisely in this part of the scale that we hope to see interesting effects - if we are interested in the notion of understanding-induced belief, that is. (Which is not to say that the other aspects of these results aren't interesting also.)
This is uncontroversial, at least in tertiary education. The problem is that, in the case of evolution, successful acquisition of these skills _ought_ to induce belief, so testing belief would seem to be a way of testing acquisition of the relevant skills. I agree it is a poor test at high school and early undergraduate level, because it is not realistic to expect the skills to have been acquired to a sufficient degree at that point. So an interesting question is when (if ever) one could expect that.
Imagine a philosophy course in which students are taught the principles of valid reasoning. If the students are able to learn the principles and apply them when instructed to do so, but remain unconvinced that they are useful in their everyday lives, one could argue that the course has failed. This is the rationale behind asking whether students "believe" in evolution.
Is the take-home that these tests should rather be conducted using examples that are not culturally polarizing?
Are you saying science education is overly ambitious in aiming to combat anti-science culture?
I completely disagree: First, why "ought" acquiring acquiring those skills induce belief? Take the examples of those who have those skills but don't believe; is your argument that somehow they are defective?
Second, the skills of sound reasoning are can certainly be acquired by high school students, let alone undergrads. The problem is that they don't just magically acquire those skills, and helping them acquire them is an immensely difficult and complicated task. Unfortunately, people tend to think that just giving them content and testing on that content does the trick. It doesn't.
I see a couple of problems here: The first is that it seems to me that you are describing a linear sequence that doesn't exist - at least for most people. Most students are not first taught these skills and then asked to apply them. The teaching and the application are inextricably linked - the flow is bi-lateral: Pattern A: Maybe you learn a bit and you start to apply that bit;. then through the process of applying you learn more, which makes you receptive to more instruction. Pattern B: Or maybe you start to explore the process itself first, and then learn some principles that you can place into context by virtue of that experience in exploration, and then you are able to take those contextualized principles and learn more about their application. Neither pattern exists in a pure form, and the actual process and sequence of application is some combination of both.
Learning to apply those principles in such a way that you only use them when asked to do so means that you haven't actually learned the principles. Learning to apply them and then only using them in varying degrees contingent on various "motivations" is altogether human.
No. Using examples that are cultural polarizing is the true test. The point is to be able to understand how to control for biases. If you can only reason properly when you have no biases then you haven't' learned the necessary skills.
@Konrad:
You are right the distribution of scores is right-skewed. It's pretty hard to get less than half the questions correct when they are "true/false" (another glaring defect i the test). There's variance, but it is mainly squeezed into the right of the mean. As you surmise, there is less discernment than their should be at the top end; a harder test would be better. Maybe @Nick will come back & propose a better scaling strategy, like IRT, whch weights questions in terms of difficulty (I hope he comes back so I can engage him on the point of whether IRT can be used if one doubts the validity of the questions, as I think one clearly should for E & BB as applied to AARs!).
Anyway, I certainly agree this evidence is less strong than what could be achieved w/ a better "science knowledge" test. Better still would be the "evolution knowledge" test we discussed in the last post. But seriously, Lawson's studies are very much in that spirit (are you able to get hold of them? you know how to get hold of me, I assume).
But I think this is still evidence more consistent with the view that "disbelief" indicates identity than that lack of knowledge of evolution or lack of proficiency in acquiring scientific knowledge. The interaction between science literacy ^& rellition on the evolution items of various sorts shows that the evolution questions mean something different to people who are high in religiosity and science litgeracy than people who are nonreligious and high in science literacy.
One more post for now and then I promise to shut up for a while:
It seems the bottom line/logical extension/point you're making here is that asking about belief in climate change is no more a measure of scientific literacy than asking about belief in evolution. Which would mean that asking either question is a test of faith, essentially (as an underlying precondition of motivated reasoning).
Or are there ways that you think the parallel doesn't hold?
Are there politicized issues for which you would say asking about belief one way or the other would be a test of scientific literacy? What about vaccinations? But you say that issue isn't really politicized across a wide sample, right? GMOs? What about HPV? Nuclear energy?
It seems that the degree of politicization is a condition that determines whether asking about belief would measure literacy. But maybe not. Maybe asking about belief in the value of vaccinations, for example, could never be an indicator of scientific literacy? By what measure do you determine how much politicization distinguishes the value (or lack thereof) of measuring belief? Or maybe belief can never be an indicator of scientific literacy?
@Joshua:
Because they do so in the overwhelming majority of people who have studied and understood evolution in detail.
I didn't deny this. But science is much more than just reasoning - it also involves assimilating a broad variety of arguments and lines of evidence, while judging the reliability and relevance of each individually and in combination. The tricky bit is assembling it all into a coherent whole.
I don't think I described a linear sequence. I completely agree with your description.
I agree it is the "true test" - I was asking Dan what _his_ take-home is, since he consistently argues that education/communication does not have the desired effect in polarizing situations. Conducting the "true test" may be pointless if we know in advance it will fail.
@dmk: I agree with the points about belief indicating identity. But isn't it an aim of education to transform identity? One might argue that if the student's identity has not been transformed in some way, no education has taken place.
konrad -
Apologies for my misreading what you were saying:
First, I don't know what evidence you use to make that claim. Second, there are other factors on play in the dynamic anyway - external influences that affect the cause-and-effect your're describing. I'd guess that a minority of people that have a strong Christian affiliation, who have studied and understood evolution in detail, don't "believe" in it (in the sense that it is "natural" and not "theistic.") I don't think they are defective, but subject to the same influences upon their reasoning as everyone else. Thus, I don't see them as defective and I don't agree with your determination of what they ought to believe. I have certainly encountered people who know quite a bit about evolution but who maintain that it is controlled by a supernatural entity. I think it is true that more information about those at the top end of the scale would be useful to evaluate this question - but I'm reasonably sure that a relatively high % of highly-religious people that would measure at the top end of the scale would nonetheless not fit with your *ought.*
I don't understand this. If we are curious to know what % of people can display reasoning that controls for biases - why wouldn't we conduct a true test that actually makes that assessment rather than some other test that tests something else? It is certainly not necessary that everyone fail a test as I described. A test-taker can lay out the differing viewpoints and pick one with an explanation of why, or indicate probabilities of which viewpoint they think is correct, or give evidence for why they think the solution is unknowable.
Not directed at me, but FWIW, I think that's an interesting question. I think the aim of education is to transform a student's process of learning. That is related to identity in that you want to transform how a student identifies as a learner - and in a sense it is a process of transforming how they form their beliefs. But I don't agree that the aim is to transform their "identity" as in whether they identify with any specific set of beliefs.
@Konrad & @Joshua:
I hesitate to add this b/c it is not actually relevant to assessing what to make of "I don't believe in evolution!" Also b/c I could, for that reason, easily be taking your statement, @Konrad, out of context. But I did want to say that I very much share Joshua's reaction to your suggestion that "successful acquisition" of knowledge of the theory of evolution " _ought_ to induce belief, so testing belief would seem to be a way of testing acquisition" of understanding.
It is no part of science to believe that "accepting" is a test of "knowing."
On the contrary, it is in fact *essential* to the enterprise of science to separate understanding/knowing form "belief"/"acceptance." Advancement of knowledge comes only when those who know or understand the current best scientific account of a phenomenon form the sense that they just don't *believe* it is right. That belief motivates them to perform valid experimentation to show that the current best understanding is in error. If those experiments corroborate their sense that the existing best understanding was wrong-- well, then that understanding is abandoned, and a new one created. At that point the new undersanding gets "taught" to students. They are expected to understand *it*. But not so we can be sure they accept *that* new understanding, but so that we can be sure that if they don't, they'll attack it too. If we didn't say at one and the same time, "here is the best understanding -- make sure *you* understand it but by all means feel free to question it & try to show that it is wrong if you are so inclined," there'd be no reason to be confident that the best understanding of anything at any given time is other than superstition or dogma.
Thank goodness Einstein understood the prevailing Newtonian theories of gravity & the speed of light but didn't *accept* them! And so what if some fraction of the students being trained in physics today don't accept quantum mechanics -- think it is "incomplete" b/c it involves an ineradicable probabilistic element that gives rise to "spooky" phenomena like entanglement that don't fit (easily at least!) with Einstein's theory of special relativity. Maybe they will "prove" someday that Einstein himself was right to reject quantum mechanics for that reason. In any case, there will be no reason to worry about whether these dissenters "understand" quantum mechanics -- any more than there was reason to think Einstein didn't.
Likely the context warped the meaning of what Konrad said, or my reaction to it, since I would be shocked if Konrad disagreed with me on this.
As I said -- none of this is actually relevant to what we are discussing. Those who say "I understand natural selection, random matuation, genetic variance etc but don't 'believe' in evolution b/c God created humans as they are," etc. are not instances of what I'm describing.
But they are instances of something -- the simple expression of cultural idenitity -- that a liberal state has no business stifling.
So, to answer another question you posed @Konrad, No, I think it most certainly is not the business of education, at least when furnished by the State, to "transform" anyone's identity as I'm using the term. That's a proposition as fundamental to the Open Society as the propositoin that no one is obliged to accept the prevailing best scientific understanding of a phenenomenon is to the Logic of Scientific Disovery.
@Joshua:
Of course "belief" in climate change is not a test of science literacy. It's very clear that the more science literate peopole are, the more likely they are to disagree on the facts on climate chante. Asking "do you think human beings are heating up the planet?" is as good a test of whether someoine is science literate as flipping a coin. It's also a horrible test for figuring out whether someone has a passable understanding of the sclience relating to the climate -- since most citizens who accept that climate change is happening understand why as well as they understand genetic variance, random mutation, and natural selection.
So yes, people who cite disagreement about climate change as evidence of a problem in science education are making a mistake. But I've said that 5 million times -- it's the focus on evolution that is new(er) for me.
And just to anticipate a nonsequitur (not from you, @Joshua, but others) -- None of this implies, either, that it is at all inappropriate for goverment to make policy based on the best undrstanding of climate science or any other kind of science or to educate students and others in the best scientific understanding. Figure out for yourselves why that's a mistake if you think that follows from what I said. It will be good practice in logical thinking.
@Joshua and Dan,
I seem to have created the impression that I think understanding the currently best explanations should _always_ induce belief - this is obviously false, with quantum physics being a clear example. In quantum physics, we see continuing and widespread controversy among specialists (in the form of publications in the academic literature) - a clear sign that understanding of this theory in its current state does _not_ induce belief.
In evolution, we see the opposite: for more than half a century (going back to before we even had DNA evidence), there has been complete consensus among specialists that evolution has happened and continues to happen in all organisms. If understanding of this particular theory (including the evidence supporting it and the long history of attempts to falsify it) did not induce acceptance in an overwhelming majority of cases, signs of dissent would be observable in the academic literature - as a rule, there is nothing scientists like better than the chance to cast doubt on an existing theory. So my claim that it _ought_ to induce belief is just based on empirical observation of what happens in the case of people learning this particular theory (typically at advanced undergraduate level and beyond) - it just happens to have a fantastic track record of convincing people.
Also, "acceptance" or "belief" (synonyms, I think) in science is _always_ provisional. It does not in any way inhibit scientists from prodding the boundaries looking for potential avenues of attack - that's what we do for a living! Perhaps you are conflating acceptance of a theory with being _invested_ in it?
Re whether education aims to transform identity - it's a question I thought I'd toss out for debate. Presumably the answer depends strongly on how one chooses to define "identity". But I remember regularly reflecting during my undergrad days on how much I had turned into a different person through what I had learned over the preceding year or so (quite unlike high school, where my pace of learning/transformation was much slower). And yes this does include changes in which groups and beliefs (both religious and political) I identified with.