Americans’ views on evolution and creationism have remained relatively unchanged over the last 30 years. That’s the conclusion of a recent Gallop study. Granted, the number of people who believe in some form of atheistic evolution have been steadily, though slowly, increasing. But the overall number is still rather low (15%), with the rest holding to theistic evolution (32%) or creationism (46%). And creationism has been pretty steady at between 43% and 46% through the whole study, with one apparently anomalous year (2011).
I linked to the in yesterday’s Flotsam and Jetsam, but the charts were interesting enough that I thought I would go ahead and pass those along as well.
The startling thing in this particular chart is the 6% who apparently swung from the second to the first category in one year. That’s a rather notable shift.
I always find it interesting when political persuasion correlates to theological issues. Frustrating, but interesting.
No big shock those who are most actively involved in a some religious group are more likely to believe that God had something to do with how we all got here. But it’s interesting that 88% of those who attend church seldom/never still believe that God was involved in some way.
So, the more education you have, the more likely you are to believe in some form of evolution. Not terribly surprising either.
The thing is, that 10,000 year qualifier might have excluded me, though I don’t agree with the other statements either…
That’s true, the survey doesn’t allow for the position that God created humans without evolution more than 10,000 years ago. And I know several people who hold positions that would fall in that category. Nonetheless, those would still be creationist rather than evolutionary positions.
There are a few problems with this poll and how it’s divided. First off, it separates theistic and atheistic evolution to where the numbers appear smaller, with no clarification on what type of creationism is being questioned. It also should be noted that many individuals don’t actually know how the evolutionary process works, and that furthermore Evolution is not Abiogenesis, which is the theory of how life came to be, not how life evolves. Creationism is to be matched against abiogenesis, not evolution.