Religiosity and students’ acceptance of evolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT We aimed to examine the acceptance of evolution and its relationship with religiosity among Greek biology university students and whether the attendance of an evolutionary biology course could affect the acceptance of evolution. In Greece the teaching of evolution has been downgraded from secondary education for years and Greeks exhibit a strong religiosity. Biology university students are those that will later, after their graduation, may become biology teachers in Greek secondary education. Our sample consisted of 603 Greek biology majors students. We conducted quantitative research and our research tool was developed using the MATE scale for exploring the acceptance of evolution and the CRS scale along with five more questions to investigate the level of religiosity. Results indicate that Greek biology students have a high acceptance of evolution, higher than the ones recorded in the USA and Turkey. Among them women scored less than men in the MATE scale and both are characterised as not very religious. Religiosity is negatively correlated, although not so much, with the acceptance of evolution and can predict almost ¼ of the variance in acceptance. The attendance of an evolutionary biology course seemed to be a factor that significantly affects the acceptance of evolution.