ArticleCBE life sciences education2020
"Accepting Evolution Means You Can't Believe in God": Atheistic Perceptions of Evolution among College Biology Students.
Article in CBE life sciences education, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evidence for the Efficacy of Conflict-reducing Practices in Undergraduate Evolution Education in a Randomized Controlled Study.CBE life sciences education · 2025Trial
- Defining climate change acceptance in undergraduate science student populations: A Delphi study.PloS one · 2026Article
- Recognizing Compatibility, but Hesitant about In-Class Discussion: Nonreligious Biology Graduate Teaching Assistant Perceptions of the Relationship between Religion and Evolution.CBE life sciences education · 2025Article
- The Experiences of Students with Concealable Muslim Identities During Peer Interactions in Undergraduate Biology Courses.CBE life sciences education · 2025Article
- How does an evolution instructor revealing as Christian or non-religious affect biology undergraduate students and their perceptions of the instructor?Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2025Article
- National randomized experimental study finds no evidence of undergraduate bias against LGB biology instructors, even in LGB-unfriendly states.Bioscience · 2025Article
- Christian Student Experiences During Peer Interactions in Undergraduate Biology Courses.CBE life sciences education · 2024Article
- Conflict reducing practices in evolution education are associated with increases in evolution acceptance in a large naturalistic study.PloS one · 2024Article
- The Impact of Life Philosophy and Major Field of Study on Brazilian Students' Knowledge of Biological Evolution.Science & education · 2023Article
- A Comparison of Online and In-Person Evolution Instruction That Includes Religious Cultural Competence.Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2022Article
- Community College Student Understanding and Perceptions of Evolution.CBE life sciences education · 2022Article
- Promoting scientific literacy in evolution through citizen science.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- A Revised Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution: Introducing the MATE 2.0.CBE life sciences education · 2022Article
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- Popular media and the bombardment of evolution misconceptions.Evolution · 2022Article
- A New Measure of Students' Perceived Conflict between Evolution and Religion (PCoRE) Is a Stronger Predictor of Evolution Acceptance than Understanding or Religiosity.CBE life sciences education · 2021Article
- Christianity as a Concealable Stigmatized Identity (CSI) among Biology Graduate Students.CBE life sciences education · 2021Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although many scientists agree that evolution does not make claims about God/god(s), students might assume that evolution is atheistic, and this may lead to lower evolution acceptance. In study 1, we surveyed 1081 college biology students at one university about their religiosity and evolution acceptance and asked what religious ideas someone would have to reject if that person were to accept evolution. Approximately half of students wrote that a person cannot believe in God/religion and accept evolution, indicating that these students may have atheistic perceptions of evolution. Religiosity was not related to whether a student wrote that evolution is atheistic, but writing that evolution is atheistic was associated with lower evolution acceptance among the more religious students. In study 2, we collected data from 1898 students in eight states in the United States using a closed-ended survey. We found that 56.5% of students perceived that evolution is atheistic even when they were given the option to choose an agnostic perception of evolution. Further, among the most religious students, those who thought evolution is atheistic were less accepting of evolution, less comfortable learning evolution, and perceived greater conflict between their personal religious beliefs and evolution than those who thought evolution is agnostic.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.