Fig. 1

a Percentage of each year’s students choosing each of four options in relation to human evolution: (1) creation by god within the last 10,000 years (green); (2) evolution over millions of years with the whole process guided by god (blue); (3) evolution over millions of years but god had no part in this process (red); (4) no idea or no opinion (yellow). Figures include lines of best fit from linear and quadratic regressions with 95% confidence intervals. The level of statistical significance (p) and the explained variance (R²) are listed below in parentheses. Options 1 and 2 show a statistically significant decrease over this period (1: p < 0.001, R² = 0.48; 2: p < 0.001, R² = 0.86). Option 3 shows a statistically significant increase (p < 0.001, R² = 0.83). There was no significant change in the percentage of students choosing Option 4 (p = 0.3). b The percentage of the wider Australian public declaring in the national census between the years 1986 and 2011 that they had no religion. This percentage is increasing in time (p < 0.001, R² = 0.96). This percentage also significantly predicts the percentage of First Year Biology students at UNSW that chose Option 3 (non-theist evolution) in our survey over the same time period (p < 0.001, R² = 0.91). Published data obtained from Anon (Anon 2013)