Less than half of America believes in evolution
According to Science (subscription required, so look here for a short summary), the percentage of people who believe in Evolution in the USA (40%) is lower than 32 of 34 countries polled*. Only Turkey came in with a lower percentage of believers, “Old Europe” averages about 70%.
* “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals” – True / false / not sure / don’t know?
(via John Gruber’s Daring Fireball)
Update (2006-08-17):
The New Scientist will be running an article on American attitudes to evolution in the next print edition on the 19th. You can read it here. One quote from the article:
American adults may be harder to reach: nearly two-thirds don’t agree that more than half of human genes are common to chimpanzees. How would these people respond when told that humans and chimps share 99 per cent of their genes?