Modern sciences in religious Iran: An assessment of the educated Iranians’ attitude toward biological evolution

В процессе изучения этого культурного феномена, уникального среди мусульманских стран, мы высказали предположение, что он возник благодаря трем обстоятельствам: централизованной государственной системе образования, внедряющей естественные науки на уровнях старших классов школы и университета; абсолютной доступности академического знания широким слоям населения; а также достаточно терпимой по отношению к научному мировоззрению интерпретации идей ислама. Данное исследование имеет большое значение для понимания проблемы взаимоотношений науки и ислама.

Ключевые слова: наука и ислам, признание эволюции, Иран, эволюция и религия.

Demographic features of the participants for the GAENE and MUM surveys

Fig. 1. The level of evolution acceptance based on (A) the obtained scores by the GAENE participants (the score 16 = the lowest level of acceptance, the score 80 = the highest level of acceptance) and (B) Three criteria implemented in the survey (evolution in general (question 2), species evolution (12), and human evolution (13))

Additionally, the level of acceptance was relatively the same with respect to different demographic features (Fig. 2). Curiously, 45 out of 147 participants who received the highest score (80) were engineering students/graduates followed by basic sciences and humanities. There were only four participants with the lowest score (16) including two PhD holders.

Fig. 2. The range of scores obtained by 2382 participants in the GAENE survey based on demographic features (A: Gender, B: Age group, C: Educational level, D: Major at University, E: Current status).

The scores 16 and 80 (shown on the vertical axis) correspond to the lowest and highest level of acceptance, respectively. White circles show the medians; box limits indicate the 25^th and 75^th percentiles as determined by R software; whiskers extend 1.5 times the interquartile range from the 25^th and 75^th percentiles; polygons represent density estimates of data and extend to extreme values (Ass. Dip. = Associate Diploma, BSc. = Bachelor of Science, MSc. = Master of Science, Sc. = Sciences, Std. = Student)

Understanding measured by the GAENE questionnaire

The level of understanding was also high in our sample population. Nearly 59% of participants were able to answer at least 6 out of 9 questions from the MUM questionnaire correctly (Fig. 3A). Nearly 87, 75, and 67% of participants answered to the questions 9, 2, and 1 (about fossils, nature of science, and classification, respectively) (Fig. 3B).

Fig. 3. The range of evolution understanding based on (A) the obtained scores by the MUM participants (Zero = no understanding, Nine = the highest level of understanding) and (B) Five criteria implemented in the survey (classification (questions 1 and 4), deep time (5 and 6), fossils (7 and 9), speciation (3 and 8), nature of science (2)

Fig. 4. The range of scores obtained by 1775 participants in the MUM survey based on demographic features (A: Gender, B: Age group, C: Educational level, D: Major at University, E: Current status).

The scores 0 and 9 (shown on the vertical axis) correspond to the lowest and highest level of understanding, respectively (the image and abbreviations are explained in Fig. 2's caption)

Also, Fig. 4 shows that, similar to evolution acceptance, understanding of evolution doesn't change sharply when participants are divided based on demographic features. Expectedly, 25 out of 95 participants who answered all the questions correctly (9 scores) were medical science students/graduates, followed by engineering and humanities.

Phone interviews

metaphysical islam biological evolution iran

The results from the interviews confirmed the results from the GAENE and MUM surveys, even though many interviewees claimed that they are religious individuals who pray three times a day. Self-reported religiosity and the frequency of pray were considered as factors determining whether interviewees are religious. Plotting interviewees' responses based on their self-reported religiosity and frequency of pray showed a relatively unifying acceptance and understanding of different aspects of evolution.

Similar to the two written surveys, regardless of being religious/non-religious, interviewees showed a high level of acceptance regarding different aspects of evolution, such as changes in species and animal as well as human evolution (Fig. 5A). The same patterns were observed when asking about the relationship between interviewees' notion of evolution and their belief system. For instance, regardless of being religious/non-religious, most interviewees saw no conflict between accepting evolution and believing in God. They also rejected the idea that accepting evolution leads to atheism, destroying the meaning of human life (Fig. 5B). They also extended this pattern when evolution and Islam were involved as they rejected the idea that “evolution is a western idea and doesn't have a place in Islam” (Fig. 5C).

Discussion

In this study, we took the issue of biological evolution as an example for understanding how modern science is being communicated among Iranians. Previously, scholars like Burton [4; 5] and Kazempour and Amirshokoohi [6] criticized superficial analyses that overly rely on state religiosity to explain the treatment of evolution in national science education without considering local political and social circumstances. A high level of acceptance and understanding of biological science in Iran supported by both quantitative and qualitative data in our study may be explained by cultural, religious, educational, and sociopolitical factors.

It is often challenging to compare studies, as they use different tools and sample populations. However, our results suggest that evolution is being communicated among Iranians differently compared to other Muslim and even secular communities. For instance, Smith et al. [7] used the same tool (the GAENE questionnaire) and a similar sample population (600 American high-school and post-secondary students), which give a solid base for comparing the results. Interestingly, our participants showed a remarkably higher level of evolution acceptance than Smith et al. [7] (Fig. 6).

Fig. 5. % of interviewees who (A) accepted evolution in general, changes in species, animal, and human evolution (out of 42 individuals) based on their self-reported religiosity, (B) rejected the idea that evolution acceptance equals atheism and nihilism, and (C) rejected/accepted the idea that “evolution is a western idea and doesn't have a place in Islam” (C) (Ambiguous answers are not included)

In one study, BouJaoude et al. [10] reported that Egyptian and Lebanese Muslim students have misconceptions about evolution and the nature of science, which often lead to rejecting evolution. In their studies, for example, 50.5 and 50.9% of the participants disagreed that “Humans and monkeys share a common ancestor” and “All living things on the planet come from the same common Ancestors”, respectively. These results are the exact opposite of 76% of our participants, who completely agreed/agreed with the statement “Humans have evolved from previously existing species”.

Fig. 6. A comparison of the level of evolution acceptance between our participants (high-school students, Associate diploma, bachelor, master, and PhD students/graduates) (n = 2074) and Smith et al. [7] (600 high- school and post-secondary students) based on the 16 questions implemented in the GAENE questionnaire. The value for the bars evolution in general, species evolution, and human evolution was calculated from taking the average of 9, 4, and 3 questions, respectively

Another study [11] showed much lower acceptance and knowledge of evolutionary theory among Pakistani medical students, compared to medical students/graduates in our survey. For instance, the average percentage of the correct answer to 10 questions designed to assess knowledge about evolution was 50.2%, while this value reached 76% in medical students/graduates answering 9 questions from the MUM survey in our study. The same was true about acceptance as only nearly 30% of Pakistani medical students showed moderate to high level of acceptance based on the MATE scores, while 93% of medical students/graduates in Iran completely agreed/agreed with evolution based on the GAENE scores. Similar to Bou- Jaoude et al. [10], the clash of religious beliefs with evolutionary teachings and lack of a thorough understanding was proposed by Yousuf et al. [11] as the main reasons for low acceptance of evolution among Pakistani medical students. It is noteworthy to mention again that BouJaoude et al. [10] and Yousuf et al. [11] used different tools to assess acceptance and understanding, which makes apple-to-apple comparison difficult. The length and the depth of each questionnaire and number of items vary among different tools for assessing acceptance and understanding of evolution. Nevertheless, it seems evident that a high level of religiosity, as well as absence of evolution in the official national curriculum, are important factors leading to misconceptions and misunderstandings about evolution. Nevertheless, the significance of the differences observed in our sample population and these studies is large enough to pursue a rational argument about why evolution is perceived differently in Iran.

Starting with the educational factors, we believe that the inclusion of evolutionary topics in high school and a compulsory unified national curriculum play an important role in our participants' high level of acceptance and understanding. Evolutionary topics have been taught in high school's biology courses that are among all students' compulsory courses in Iran. They may learn that the evolution is guided by God or is according to the laws of the designed world, or some of them can explain the existence of some biological processes but not all of them, especially human cognitive faculties, but still the education of the process of evolution, the hierarchy of categories of species and the evolution of species in millions of years are among the essential part of natural science studies in Iran's schools. For example, we asked interviewees whether they have heard of Charles Darwin. One of the high-school students said: “I heard about the theory of human genesis based on Darwin's ideas... I did some research about it...” Another high-school student stated: “I heard about Darwin in the Campell biology book... I realized that evolution through natural selection was Darwin's work”. It is also important to note that Iran is among the top 10 countries with the highest number of universities in the world. Although some criticize such explosive growth in higher education after the 1978 revolution to compromise the quality of the outputs, however, it definitely has created a great opportunity for the public to experience an academic atmosphere more tangibly. This seems among the explanations of wide acceptance and understanding of evolution in today's Iran. There are more than 3 million university students now in Iran across the whole country. The distribution of universities in Iran also is not restricted to big cities, but also one can see them in small towns or even in the countryside. This distribution of the higher education distinguishes Iran from other Muslim countries. Every student can be a missionary of modern science to his/her family and neighbors and so indirectly educate them.

Regarding religious factors, we observed that the way our participants formulated their attributes to religious beliefs and evolution was unique compared to other Muslim- majority countries. It seems that in Iran, people do not oppose the scientific worldview with the religious worldview. That is probably why the acceptability of evolutionary theory is comparably the same among religious and non-religious participants. Comparing our results with Hameed et al. [12] shows that in other Muslim countries, the evolutionary theory is not usually welcomed by even the secular part of the society, similar to the religious part but in a less assertive way. To discriminate between the two poles of the society, we can refer to the statistics based on the frequency of pray, in Hameed et al. [12] or to self-identification as a religious person. According to our survey, Iranians are divided into three groups as 40, 38, and 22% of them pray three times, never, and occasionally, respectively. Another survey report from 2020 with a sample population of over 50 thousand participants suggested that only 32% of the Iranian population identifies themselves as Shiite Muslim with the rest as atheist (9%), Zoroastrian (8%), spiritual (7%), agnostic (6%), and Sunni Muslim (5%). Curiously, 33% of the sample population did not identify themselves to any of the abovementioned categories. The study also states that the Iranian society is under a significant transformation as half of the sample population reported losing their religion. In comparison with the percentage of people who favor Sharia' explicitly to be an official ruler in their country as the sign of identifying themselves as supporting religious life in Afghanistan (99%), Egypt (74%), Iraq (91), Pakistan (84%), as the major neighbors of Iran (according to the studies by Pew Research Center 2013) and also Turkey (12%), only half of Iranian people favors Sharia' as the official ruler. However, while the percentage of religious favoring in other mentioned countries corresponds to the percentage of acceptability of evolutionary theory, in Iran, there is no such correspondence. Based on our results, about 80% of our participants completely agree or to some extent agree with the evolutionary theory, while they were widely distributed with regard to religiosity as shown in our survey and other's. This strange difference seems to be an indicator that in Iran, people consider science not as an enemy of religion or as its rival but as a separate domain of inquiry.

Accordingly, religiosity does not seem to be an influential factor when it comes to accepting the evolution among our participants (Fig. 5). Otherwise, we should have observed hesitancy and rejection among religious participants. Based on several participant's quotations, it can be argued that they were able to separate evolution and their belief system, something we cannot see among other Muslim societies, as mentioned in Hameed et al. [12], even though they (physicians and medical students) are expected to do so due to their profession and educational degree. For example, we asked our participants whether they had heard of Richard Dawkins (as a prominent biologist who believes evolution leads to atheism). Interestingly, nearly 45% of our participants knew him, and they had read his famous books like. The blind watchmaker or The selfish gene, which have been translated and published widely in Iran. Very interestingly, almost all the participants who knew Dawkins paid tribute to him when they were talking about Dawkins' contribution to evolutionary science but negatively criticized him because of his efforts to announce atheism as an undeniable consequence of evolution. One male interviewee with a degree in humanities said: “...Dawkins has some presumptions (his atheistic point of view) which jeopardize his scientific argument...” Another female participant who is a Master graduate in agriculture showed her criticism of Dawkins' worldview as follows: I bought one of his books called The blind watchmaker and read it... he completely accepts evolution and rejects the role of God in his book. He also considers humans as robotic and mechanistic creatures... I am 100% in agreement with him about evolution, but I think his mechanistic point of view about humans is too simple-minded. I don't want to say humans are separated from other animals, but he has to be more flexible when it comes to these issues”. We came across another participant who had a bachelor degree in humanities. He also felt unpleasant about Dawkins trying to popularize atheist through evolution as follows: “First I saw some video clips about him on the internet in which atheists and religious people had a debate... I also read The blind watchmaker... I follow him only as an evolutionist who has some opinions about evolution, not more, and when I assess his ideas by my mind... I have recently understood that some philosophers were against his ideas... he is just a biologist and doesn't know more than philosophers”. Another participant who is a student also said: “I accept Dawkins' ideas only scientifically... I am completely neutral toward his beliefs though”. In the same way, 38 out of 42 participants believed that people could accept evolution and also believe in Allah at the same time, even though 16 of them considered themselves as non-religious people.