by Liz Barnes Does someone have to be an atheist to accept evolution? According to the philosophy of science and many science educators the answer is no. However, my recent study has revealed that over half of college biology students in the United States think that in order to accept evolution fully, they would have to be an atheist. This is a challenge if we want to increase acceptance of evolution in a country were almost half of the residents do not think humans evolved. We asked students in college biology classes to describe ideas that one would have to reject in order to accept evolution and half of students wrote that believing in God and/or religion was off the table if they were going to accept evolution. Both religious and non-religious students were equally likely to hold this misperception, but it was only among highly religious students that we