Muslim students weigh in on evolution

In Indonesia and Pakistan, questions about how science and faith can be reconciled.

In the first large study of its kind, a survey of 3,800 high-school students in Indonesia and Pakistan has found that teachers are delivering conflicting messages about evolution.

The Can$250,000 Islam and Evolution research project is the first large study of students, teachers and scientists in countries with significant Muslim populations to examine their understanding and acceptance of evolution. Some results from the three-year project were presented at a symposium at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, this week.

“We now have empirical data for how Muslim students, teachers and scientists think about the subject,” says Brian Alters, the study’s lead investigator and director of the Evolution Education Research Center, a joint project between McGill and Harvard universities. “It was pretty much a black hole prior to this.”

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