category: Religion
Evolution vs. Wealth
Author: Jerry Coyne
Source: whyevolutionistrue
From
Calamities of Nature comes this unprofessionally drawn but most enlightening graph of the relationship between national wealth (gross domestic product) and belief in evolution, with each dot representing a country (dots from similar regions have the same color).
The points are not all independent, of course, because geographically contiguous countries have similar religions (ergo similar feelings about evolution) and similar degrees of wealth. Still, it shows what I’ve mentioned several times before: northern Europe has high national wealth and high belief in evolution; eastern Europe has the opposite, even though many of those countries were once Communist, and the poorer you are, the less likely you are to accept evolution.
The positive relationship suggests that countries that are wealthier, and whose inhabitants are doing better, have less impetus to be religious, and hence less need to reject evolution.
Read more at
Whyevolutionistrue
