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.

摘要

我们旨在研究希腊生物学大学生对进化论的接受及其与宗教信仰的关系，以及是否参加进化生物学课程是否会影响进化论的接受。在希腊，进化论的教学已从中学教育降级了多年，希腊人表现出强烈的宗教信仰。生物学大学生是指那些将在毕业后后来成为希腊中学教育中的生物学老师的学生。我们的样本包括603名希腊生物学专业的学生。我们进行了定量研究，并使用MATE量表开发了我们的研究工具，以探索对进化的接受程度和CRS量表以及另外五个问题来调查宗教信仰的水平。结果表明，希腊生物学专业的学生对进化的接受程度很高，高于美国和土耳其的记录。在她们中，女性在MATE量表上的得分低于男性，而且都被认为不是很虔诚。宗教信仰与进化的接受程度呈负相关关系，尽管关系不大，但可以预测接受程度变化的近1/4。参加进化生物学课程似乎是一个极大影响进化接受程度的因素。