The Atlantic Also Wonders Why Support Among Republicans is Dropping

David A. Graham, of The Atlantic, also wonders why support is dropping among Republicans for Evolutionary theory.  He writes:

One possibility is that respondents who identified as Republican and believed in evolution in 2009 are no longer identifying as Republicans. Fewer scientists, for example, are reportedly identifying with the GOP, and the overall trend is for fewer Americans to call themselves Republicans. But both Gallup and separate polling from Pew found approximately the same party ID in 2009 and 2013.

Another is that the rise of "intelligent design" education has helped to swing younger Americans against evolution. Yet the age breakdown remains similar in 2009 and 2013, with respondents ages 18 to 29 most likely to believe in evolution.

What does that leave? Maybe the gap represents an emotional response by Republicans to being out of power. Among others, Chris Mooney has argued that beliefs on politically contentious topics are often more rooted in opposition to perceived attacks than anything else—an instance of "motivated reasoning." Given that Democrats have controlled the White House and Senate since 2009, this could be backlash to the political climate, though it will be hard to tell until Republicans control Washington again.

Given that people do not tend to change their religious perspectives based on who is in office, I do not think this is it, either.  Something is being missed here. I think it is possible that the rise in Republicans who reject evolution is being influenced, at least in part, by the uptick in the number of self-described conservatives being home schooled.  From an Education News story in March:

More than 2 million children around the U.S. are homeschooled, a number that is 75% higher than it was in 1999. And the number is expected not just to grow, but to grow exponentially over the next decade — especially since the advent of free virtual public schools and quality curriculum all around the country.

While the story is quick to point out that the parents of these children are increasingly choosing this route not just because of religious reasons, conservative Christians are still vastly the bulk of those being home schooling.  I have found very few home school curricula that do not exude antipathy toward evolution.  This  has been the case for some time. Arguing against this perspective is the fact that a higher percentage of younger people accept evolution.  However, we don't know about the educational breakdown, apart from "did you graduate from college or not?"  How many of those evangelical protestants that reject evolution were home schooled?  It would be nice to know.  In any event, however, it can only be one factor of many due to the relatively small number of children involved.  The reasons behind the drop in support are likely multifaceted.

BTW: there is one very unusual response collected by the poll that I missed the first time around.  Among self-described mainline protestants that accept evolutionary theory, 36% think that evolution was guided by God and 36% think that God was not involved.  If you are a self-described mainline protestant in the second batch, how does that work exactly?  You believe in God but you don't think He has acted in the evolution of biodiversity on the planet?  What does He do?

Is The Republican Party Anti-Science?

The Atlantic doesn't think so.  In an editorial called The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party, Mischa Fisher makes the case that the blame can be equally spread around and that rank-and-file Republicans are every bit as educated in science as democrats. I confess that I have, perhaps, fallen into this trap, profiling, almost with glee, such scientific giants as Paul Broun of Georgia, and Don McLeroy, of Texas ("I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts").  Indeed, Fisher writes:

I'm the first to admit that there are elected Republicans with a terrible understanding of science—Representative Paul Broun of Georgia, an M.D. who claims evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell” is one rather obvious example—and many more with substantial room for improvement. But Republicans, conservatives, and the religious are no more uniquely “anti-science” than any other demographic or political group. It’s just that “anti-science” has been defined using a limited set of issues that make the right wing and religious look relatively worse.

Perhaps this is true but that, in a way, makes them look even worse because, if they accept the rest of established, accepted science but can't wrap their brains around evolution and global warming (lets call it what it is), then the legitimate reasons for rejecting those areas scientifically crumbles. How did everybody else get the science right and the evolutionary biologists get it so wrong?

This paragraph, however, surprised me:

Numerically speaking, according to Gallup, only a marginally higher percentage of Republicans reject evolution completely than do Democrats. Yes, an embarrassing half of Republicans believe the earth is only 10,000 years old—but so do more than a third of Democrats. And a slightly higher percentage of Democrats believe God was the guiding factor in evolution than Republicans.

When one reads newspaper accounts of democrats and science, the first revelation is revealed nowhere.  Reports always indicate that democrats are enlightened and Republicans are  scientifically illiterate.  On the other hand, while the last part of this paragraph is probably true, the reason for that may be reflected in the fact that a higher percentage of Republicans think that humans were created ex nihilo around 10,000 years ago.The percentages just got shifted from one column to the other. 

To me, one of the most interesting things about the table that is quoted in the paragraph is that only 20% of those questioned think that God had no hand in either the creation or evolution of humans.  I make this statement with the understanding that I am making a large assumption here: that those that think that humans were created in the last 10,000 years think that God had a hand in it.  The reason I think it is a valid assumption is that I have yet to find anyone, anywhere that accepts the creationist account of origins and who is not a fundamentalist Christian. 

The rest of the article is damning in its examination of bad science policy on both sides of the aisle and should be read by anybody interested in this area.