What affects acceptance of evolution?

There's a creationist conference coming to Michigan State University this Saturday, so I and others have been thinking and talking about how to respond. The majority think that complete silence on the part of MSU scientists (faculty and students alike) is the way to go, but I think responding is a good idea, and am not really afraid of bad press or short-term effects. To me what matters is what happens in society in the long run - and I think that is really the only thing that matters: some event may cause a surge in some measure of creationism, but if the event causes a decrease in creationism over a span of many years, then all is well, yes?

Besides this event and others like them, what can really change the tides of creationism in the USA?

We might recall what the origin of creationism is (and I know many will at this point already be put off). It is of course religion. And it is only religion. It is not all religion, as there are many scientists that believe (on evidence) that evolution is the best way to describe our origins, but it is only religion.

I was then today directed to this study published this month in Evolution: Education and Outreach:
The relative importance of religion and education on university students’ views of evolution in the Deep South and state science standards across the United States (that I had read about earlier on Epiphenom).

Their main result is contained in this figure:

From the abstract:

Results: We found that the degree of religiosity mattered significantly more than education when predicting students’ understanding of evolution. When we focused on acceptance of evolution only, students taught evolution or neither evolution nor creationism in high school had significantly higher acceptance than those taught both evolution and creationism or just creationism. Science majors always outscored non-science majors, and not religious students significantly outperformed religious students. Highly religious students were more likely to reject evolution even though they understood that the scientific community accepted the theory of evolution. Overall, students in two of three biology classes increased their acceptance of evolution, but only those students that seldom/never attended religious services improved. K-12 state science standard grades were significantly and negatively correlated with measures of state religiosity and significantly and positively correlated with measures of state educational attainment. [Emphasis added]

So, I submit that the problem is not that we don't know what to do about the problem of creationism in America, but it is that no one wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole.