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In America, 46% of People Hold a Creationist View of Human Origins

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-ess-ay!-you-ess-ay! dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The latest Gallup poll is out, and it finds that 46% of Americans hold the view that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. According to Gallup, the percentage who hold this view has remained unchanged since 1982, when they first started asking the question. Roughly 33% of Americans believe in divinely guided evolution, and 15% believe that humans evolved without any supernatural help."

11 of 1,359 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Thereâ(TM)s a big difference between what people tell pollsters because they think thatâ(TM)s what they *should* say, verses what they actually do or believe. For example most people say they go to church on a regular basis, yet other polls say church attendance is down, and the truth is that most people sleep in on Sunday. Most Americans say they are Christians because they think itâ(TM)s the âoerightâ thing to say, but most probably canâ(TM)t accurately quote a single significant paragraph of the Bible, new or old, nor articulate any significant bible theory. The truth is that most people are basically agnostic.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Really? by mcmonkey · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're not making me feel better. I don't know if there is a big difference between 'most people don't believe in evolution' and 'most people think they should say they don't believe in evolution.'

      Actually, I'd say the later is worse. Whether you think we're here as a result of evolution or creation, you're not going anywhere without thinking for yourself. Someone who examines the evidence and concludes creation is most probable is (IMNSHO) mistaken, but can be reasoned with. Someone who believes in evolution just because that's what they've been told is lost.

    2. Re:Really? by Barsteward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      and they are teaching the kids.... its a dangerous race to the bottom of the pit. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/30/christian-fundamentalists-plan-teach-genocide?cat=commentisfree&type=article

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    3. Re:Really? by samoanbiscuit · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Here's the key quote from that passage:

      American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum. "These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

      I don't know, nor care about how knowledgeable you are about your own personal sky fairy, but generally, atheists have followed the narrative of being raised in a religion and then giving it up. Most religious people belong to their religions by an accident of birth (or politics in some cases), and there was no great reflection of the whys and wherefores of their religion. Because you believe in something through sheer cultural inertia does not make you more knowledgeable, in fact the opposite.

    4. Re:Really? by tolkienfan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "science can't disprove God..."
      This is basically the "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" claim.
      Actually, Victor J Stenger makes the very convincing case that absence of evidence can indeed be evidence of absence when such evidence should be abundant but isn't, and that this really is the case with the deist gods, such as the Christian God.
      I wholeheartedly recommend him: a very good read.

  2. Who answers these polls? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Who actually answers these polls?
    I bet even in 1982 it was mostly old people.

  3. Evolution as a Creation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What if you believe in evolution as a divine creation?

  4. Re:Until you can prove them wrong by doconnor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is no evidence to support the idea of a divine creator. There is a growing body of evidence that the Universe could have been created from nothing (aka a quantum vacuum).

  5. Re:Until you can prove them wrong by swished7 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The idea of a divine creator is no sillier than the idea of creation from nothing.

    I'm tempted to agree with that statement. The problem I have with religious belief systems is when questioning the system is forbidden. A (good) scientist is willing to change his theory to suit his observations. Non-religious types "mock" those who are so attached to what they've been told to believe they can't accept new information.

  6. Re:Until you can prove them wrong by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A single photon with a frequency of 10^98Hz has enough energy to create all the matter in the universe.

    Photons are popping in and out of the quantum soup all the time.

    --
    No sig today...
  7. There's some degree of conflict by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Gallup and a few others have consistently gotten numbers between 40-48% for this data, but for reasons I don't fully understand, CBS polls on the same issue get slightly higher results. They get routinely in the 50-55% range http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-965223.html. I'm not sure why this discrepancy exists, but it isn't a single yearly issue and it doesn't seem to be connected to how the questions are phrased, which suggests there's some more subtle issue going on.

    The data for both this years Gallup poll and previous years does show some fairly predictable patterns. For example, by most of the previous polls, around 60% of Republicans are Young Earth Creationists while a little under 40% of Democrats are Young Earth Creationists. http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx. This should not however be taken as general evidence that Republicans or conservatives are dumb or uneducated. The GSS as part of their regular survey does a set about general science knowledge, and that data suggests that when not asking questions about evolution or age of the Earth, progressives and conservatives look very similar, and there's some evidence that the people with the least science knowledge are self-identified moderates http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/03/the-republican-fluency-with-science/ although exactly what is going on is not clear. http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/2011/04/political-affiliation-and-scientific.html. This is part of a general trend which suggests that moderates in the US are often not very well informed.

    Also, while Gallup says that the fraction of people who reject evolution has stayed roughly constant, there's a potentially more interesting trend in the data, over the last 30 years there's been a steady increase in people who say that evolution occurred with God taking no part in the process. http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx. Most of that is movement not from the strict creationists but from a reduction in the size of the group that thinks that evolution happened with God guiding it. This may reflect the general decline of the moderately religious, especially so called "mainline Protestants" or it may be due to other effects such as general increases in partisanship.