Knowledge of elementary scientific facts is all too sparse among American adults. A quarter of Americans remain unaware of the fundamental Copernican reality that the Earth rotates around the sun (as opposed to the sun rotating around the Earth). Of those who have that most basic knowledge, a quarter don’t know the Earth’s circumnavigation takes a year (as opposed to a day or a month). A third of Americans believe that astrology is at least partly scientific. More than half don’t accept the fact that humans evolved from earlier species of animals, and 59 percent don’t believe the universe started with a big bang. Unfortunately, ignorance of many such scientific facts has not been substantially changing over the past few decades (also see National Science Board 2014; Frazier 2014).
Figure 1: Distribution of educational attainment by year
But while scientific knowledge has often changed at most only slowly, noticeable changes have taken place in educational attainment and religiosity. In particular, educational attainment has increased while traditional religious beliefs and practices have decreased.