2 ms·
Well the point of the paper is that regardless of what your religion teaches (and the Roman Catholic church, in particular, is not anti-evolution; but not pro-e
by partdavid 4y ago
Well the point of the paper is that regardless of what your religion teaches (and the Roman Catholic church, in particular, is not anti-evolution; but not pro-evolution either, and offers its members essentially a choice of which mechanism of creation to believe), your "sociocultural environment" influences your beliefs more than what religion you say you're a part of. So yes, in accordance with the paper, it's probably more likely that even Catholics in the U.S. will be exposed to more anti-evolution indoctrination and more of their parents and teachers will try to deny evolutionary science, even if they aren't members of a specifically anti-evolution sect.
What the paper doesn't really go into is to how religion influences that "sociocultural environment"--it's just measuring effects for individuals. It's clear to me that "teach the controversy" movements, attacks on evolutionary science like the Scopes trial, attempts to remove evolution from biology texts and the actual removal in some schools are in large part motivated by religion, and comprise a lot of that "sociocultural environment" the paper refers to. Catholics have a choice whether to believe in a literal six-day creation and the creation of all life in its current form, so in a place like the U.S., where it's simply more socially acceptable to be an anti-evolutionist, they'll do so in more frequent numbers than where it's not.