What do you believe

Further, highly religious students who perceived evolution as atheistic perceived more conflict between their religious beliefs and evolution and felt less comfortable learning evolution compared with highly religious students who perceived evolution as agnostic. These results, in tandem with prior literature, suggest that college biology instructors may be able to support highly religious student evolution acceptance by explicitly describing that evolution does not disprove the existence of supernatural entities.

In other words, teaching the bounded nature of science in the context of evolution by describing evolution as agnostic rather than atheistic.

While prior literature suggests that religiosity and evolution acceptance are related due to specific religious beliefs that are incompatible with evolution Scott, ; Winslow et al.

However, our methodology for this study does not allow us to make claims about the causality of the relationships we studied. However, student self-reports in interview studies suggest that helping students understand that evolution is agnostic may increase their evolution acceptance Winslow et al. Our results build on the prior literature and confirm that the conception that evolution is atheistic is prevalent among students and statistically significantly related to lower evolution acceptance among religious students.

Together, this body of research and experience from evolution educators suggests that instructors can increase evolution acceptance among religious students by explicitly teaching them that evolutionary theory is agnostic rather than atheistic.

The magnitude of this effect should be explored in future research. Our results also highlight the importance of examining religious students separately from nonreligious students in evolution education. Because religious students have a set of worldviews that can create barriers to evolution acceptance that are not present for nonreligious students, relationships between variables and evolution acceptance will likely be different for religious and nonreligious students.

Although recent evolution education studies have probed the interactions between religiosity and other variables when studying evolution acceptance Weisberg et al.

However, our results build on the growing body of literature that suggests this should become a common part of any protocol in which researchers are measuring evolution acceptance. Given these results and prior literature, we encourage biology instructors to think about how their own personal views of evolution and religion may affect how they communicate with students about whether evolution is atheistic or agnostic.

Seventy-five percent of biologists nationwide do not believe in a God Ecklund and Scheitle, ; Pew, , so presumably these biologists hold the personal view of atheistic evolution. However, do biologists who hold an atheistic personal view of evolution recognize and communicate to their students the bounded nature of science? It is likely that instructors who do not have personal religious backgrounds themselves do not think or teach about this distinction in the context of evolution Barnes and Brownell, , , because the culture of science is generally seen as more compatible with atheism than theism Ecklund and Park, However, our data suggest that whether an instructor recognizes and communicates the bounded nature of science accurately during evolution instruction could matter for religious student outcomes in evolution education.

For these reasons, we encourage instructors to familiarize themselves with Religious Cultural Competence in Evolution Education Barnes and Brownell, , an umbrella framework of instructional practices identified in the literature to help nonreligious instructors better understand how to teach religious students about evolution in an effective and culturally competent way, which includes teaching the bounded nature of science Barnes et al.

We operated on an assumption about the nature of science that supernatural existence or influence is outside the scope of science. We agree that evolution operates from the assumption that a God is not needed for evolution to occur, but do not agree that this is incompatible with a personal belief that a God does exist and has somehow influenced evolution.

Researchers in evolution education have discussed and advocated for this distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism in the evolution education literature Scott, ; Sober, We chose to aggregate scores from Likert-type response options to create continuous Likert scales and used parametric statistics in our analyses. As argued by Norman , this issue has two parts: measurement and statistics. The conclusions from the parametric statistics are valid as long as the assumptions of the data distributions are roughly met.

Substantial literature exists to show that parametric statistics are robust, giving the right answers even when assumptions are violated. In the Results sections of this paper, we have demonstrated that the assumptions linear regression has on data distributions are roughly met, which justifies the use of the parametric statistics methods on the data. However, we would like to acknowledge the controversy in the measurement part.

In our study, we followed a commonly accepted practice of summing individual items scores to form the score of the scale and use the summed score to represent the latent construct.

We agree with the opponents of this practice that single Likert response format items are on an ordinal scale, but the proponents of this practice argue that many studies have shown that Likert scales as opposed to single items produce interval data appropriate for parametric statistics e.

As a further direction, one may consider applying item response theory Hambleton et al. Further, we found that having this perception predicted lower levels of evolution acceptance and comfort learning evolution as well as higher perceived conflict between religious beliefs and evolution among highly religious students.

We define religiosity as the extent to which one participates in religious activities such as prayer and service attendance i.

We would like to acknowledge Jim Collins for his feedback on earlier versions of the article as well as members of the Biology Education Research lab at Arizona State University for their feedback. Barnes et al. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author s. It is available to the public under an Attribution—Noncommercial—Share Alike 3. Hayley M. Gale M. Taija M. Sara E.

Add to favorites Download Citations Track Citations. View article. Agnosticism is of the essence of science … It simply means that [we] shall not say [we] know or believe that which [we] have no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe … Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology … Agnosticism simply says that we know nothing of what may be beyond phenomena.

Options students were given for their personal view of evolution and then what they thought most closely represented the scientific view of evolution Choice Description presented to student Young Earth creationism All forms of life were first brought into being in their present form by God —10, years ago at the same time.

Old Earth creationism All forms of life were first brought into being in their present form by God at different times over billions of years. Creationism with some evolution Some forms of life evolved from earlier forms, but God created groups of organisms such as reptiles, birds, mammals, and humans separate from one another, and organisms that currently exist have evolved slowly from those first creations.

Humans-only creationism Almost all forms of life evolved from earlier forms, but humans were created by God in their present form separate from the rest of life. Interventionist evolution All forms of life evolved from earlier forms, but God intervenes from time to time to shape or override evolution. Deistic evolution All forms of life evolved from earlier forms, but life and evolution were first set in motion by God without a specific purpose or plan.

Agnostic evolution All forms of life evolved from earlier forms, but it is uncertain whether God was involved in evolution. Atheistic evolution All forms of life evolved from earlier forms, but no God has ever played any role in evolution. Vision and change in undergraduate biology education: A call to action. Washington, DC.

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Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Google Scholar Harris, S. The end of faith: Religion, terror, and the future of reason. New York: Norton. Adult voices never intrude. Coming from all manner of religious backgrounds, the young people speak openly, from the heart.

Though produced nine years ago, the film is as alive and vibrant in as when it first came out. What Do You Believe? You can also see a two-minute trailer. Compelling and highly recommended for young adults and for their elders, who may have underestimated the spiritual curiosity and wisdom of teenagers. Download the Discussion Guide. Sarah Feinbloom is an award-winning director, producer and editor whose work includes documentaries, dramatic narratives and fundraising videos.

Sarah also created and leads workshops on interfaith dialogue and religious diversity. Sarah has a B. She has taught high school social studies, ESL and youth filmmaking workshops.

Close menu. Volz " In her new film, a Catholic, Pagan, Jew, Muslim, Lakota and Buddhist offer their deeply personal faith journeys, life challenges, and evolving ideas about higher powers, life purpose, the nature of suffering, religious intolerance and death.

She caught up with each of the millennials featured in her first film, now in their 30s, to chronicle how their faith has changed since they were teenagers. Pew Research Center data has characterized millennials as "nones" — those who are religiously unaffiliated.

Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than did their parents' and grandparents' generations — even when they were the same age, according to Pew. But that doesn't mean millennials are uninterested in religion and spirituality — at least, not the ones Feinbloom has followed now for more than a decade. Seventeen years later she was prompted to do a follow up film, revisiting the same six people, now in their 30s, and asking about their journeys. In the following interview, Julie Byrne, Hartman Chair in Catholic Studies at Hofstra University, talks with Feinbloom about the processes of returning to previous subject matter and what transpires during that time in the lives of informants, filmmakers, and the culture at large.

Sarah Feinbloom is an award-winning director, producer and editor whose work includes documentaries, dramatic narratives and fundraising videos. Sarah also created and leads workshops on interfaith dialogue and religious diversity. Sarah has a B. She has taught high school social studies, ESL and youth filmmaking workshops.