GALLUP POLLS: American Beliefs: Evolution vs. Bible's Explanation of Human Origins

Gallup / UPI ^ | March 8, 2006 | by Frank Newport /

[rface]

Education, church attendance, partisanship related to beliefs......

About half of Americans reject an evolutionary explanation for the origin of humans and believe that God created humans at one time "as is." Those with lower levels of education, those who attend church regularly, those who are 65 and older, and those who identify with the Republican Party are more likely to believe in the biblical view of the origin of humans than are those who do not share these characteristics.

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This is how UPI sees it:

March 8, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A Gallup Poll released Wednesday suggests about 53 percent of Americans rejects the theory of evolution as the explanation for the origin of humans.

Instead, they believe God created humans at one time "as is," the survey showed.

53%: ... of Americans rejects the theory of evolution as the explanation for the origin of humans.

31%: ..... of respondents said they believe humans evolved, but God guided the process.

1.2%: ..... said they believe the scientific theory of evolution and "God had no part."

to sum it up: Researchers said .......uneducated people, fundamentalists, old people and Republicans are more likely to believe in the biblical story of the origin of humans.

[lnbchip]

"Evolution is 150 years old. How old must it be before it is no longer "young"?"

In the grand scheme of science and mathematics, that's still young. The scientific revolution by the Greeks in the 16th and 17th centuries was following work by ancients such as Copernicus who were searching the universe for answers to questions of math and science. Work beyond this period is considered the Modern Era - 1700's to the present (Including Darwin).

[AmericanRepublican]

The problem is, there can never be any sane debate using scientific theory or principles when trying to refute creationism. It simply cannot be done in a moderated, theoretically organized fashion. You cannot argue against belief.

I do not say God having a hand in evolution is impossible nor will I ever argue against the belief. But with the principle facts of science, carbon-dating, cellular biology and evolution of binded matter I will not hold back on the knowledge we the people of America have held and ascended with for centuries.

[discostu]

For a non-experimental science I'd say 300 years at least. Sciences that can't be played with in the lab progress slowly because they're incapable of making new evidence on demand, they have to rely on evidence being found, and in the case of evolution that finding is difficult. In a lot of ways evolutionary science is in the same boat astronomy was in before the telescope was invented, they've got shockingly little data to work with when you really stop to think about it. Some of the best data they're getting is from biologists tracking animal changes in the field, that to me is really the data set that is going to solidify evolutionary theory, eventually we're going to see macro-evolution happen and there's going to be a lot of forehead slapping.

[Nathan Zachary]

"I do believe in God, but I will not refute the principles of science and biology"

why would you?

As God's word is truth, so is what science hopes to prove as well. Science isn't just unproved theory. Scientific fact is the end result of a proved theory. By no means however, are the vast majority of theories fact. Recent deep drilling has proved some theories obsolete lately for example.

[discostu]

Because the question is false from the start. Evolutionists aren't trying to prove God wrong or right, they're just trying to figure out how we got all these species (including humans) on this rock at the same time, why some species went away, and if and why other species will come to exist.

Why should they quote the Bible? There's no discussion of evolution in the Bible. From a time line perspective the Bible skips the part evolutionary science is interested in.

Don't know of any evolutionary scientists that like to quote Genesis, and from an evolutionary science perspective the answer to the question of which was first Jesus or Earth is "not my department".

[lnbchip]

I may be wrong - but doesn't the fossil record indicate that, if macroevolution is a reality, it occurs in sudden events? There still isn't a missing link explanation to tie separate species together.

Just curious. I don't know if we will ever live to witness "macroevolution". If you look at the fossil record, to the best of my knowledge, it appears to happen rather suddenly and infrequently. To think that it will be observed in our lifetimes (such a small period of time) is asking a lot. Even if it is a reality.

[Ichneumon]

About half of Americans reject an evolutionary explanation for the origin of humans

About half of Americans can't name even a single Supreme Court Justice either, 80% don't know where Iraq is, 90% can't name the presidents on Mount Rushmore (over 60% didn't even know there were four faces on Mount Rushmore), more than half of Americans don't know that Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) was President during most of WW II, more than half of Americans can't name five of the Ten Commandments, 82% think that "God helps those who help themselves" is a Bible verse, half of graduating seniors think that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife... and so on and so on.

Scientific literacy is even worse. Fewer than 10% of graduating Harvard seniors could explain why it's hotter in the Summer than Winter, and half of George Mason University seniors surveyed could correctly identify the difference between an atom and a molecule, half of Americans do not know that an electron is smaller than an atom or that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.

So I'm hardly surprised that half of them aren't aware of, or don't understand, far more complex topics like biology, and the overwhelming evidence along multiple independent cross-confirming lines establishing the truth of evolutionary biology, especially when anti-evolutionists have spent decades flooding the public discourse with anti-evolution propaganda consisting of huge amounts of misinformation, disinformation, fallacies, misrepresentations, doctored quotes, and outright falsehoods in an attempt to undermine understanding of and confidence in evolutionary biology.

In any case, truth is hardly determined by a public opinion poll. If you're fixated on polls in order to get a grip on a topic, though, it makes more sense to poll the people who are actually most familiar with the topic and in the best position to make an informed judgment about it. In this case, over 95% of scientists in general, and over 99% of biologists, are convinced of the validity of evolutionary biology, because they've had the opportunity to be most familiar with the evidence and research.

[discostu]

Depends on which school you're subscribing too. One of the problems with these debates is people tend to talk about THE theory of evolution when there really isn't such a thing, there are a few theories going around right now none of which bear much resemblance to Darwinism. Some think it's all about the sudden events, some think the fossil record is itself a missing link explanation, some are kind of a mish-mash.

I'm with you, it's unlikely in our lifetime, it's unlikely in any given lifetime. It's probably (if evolutionary theory is at least kind of right) going to happen eventually and hopefully some biologist will be there to take copious notes. Just hopefully it doesn't rely on cataclysmic events, nobody would be taking notes then we'd all be busy.

[Stultis]

Only 1.2 percent said they believe the scientific theory of evolution and "God had no part."

Wow -- I didn't realize what a tiny minority they are.

That's unsurprising. Serious evolutionary scientists don't have the mindset that science has much to do particularly with ideology, philosophy and religion, so they're not apt to make a point of this. At the same time this statistic is embarrassing and inconvenient for activist antievolutionists who want to play up evolution as anti-God, and it's practitioners and defenders as part of a vast atheistic conspiracy, so they won't mention it either.

[Nathan Zachary]

"eventually we're going to see macro-evolution happen"

It hasn't happened within recorded history, so that keeps making the earth older and older to fit these theories. The theory that each species has within it's design (there's that ID thing again) limited abilities built into it's DNA to adapt at the micro level, which is already observed. Why then, isn't what's observed move to the top of the list and these other theories yet unproven moved downward as they should be? Truth, however it falls, should be what governs, not belief, or lack of it.

[Coyoteman]

Cave men?

No, meet Mrs. Ples:

---

Fossil: Sts 5 Site: Sterkfontein Cave, South Africa (1)

Discovered By: R. Broom & J. Robinson 1947 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 2.5 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, floral & faunal data (1, 4)

Species Name: Australopithecus africanus (1, 2)

Gender: Male (based on CAT scan of wisdom teeth roots) (1, 30) Female (original interpretation) (4)

Cranial Capacity: 485 cc (2, 4)

Information: No tools found in same layer (4)

Interpretation: Erect posture (based on forward facing foramen magnum) (8)

Nickname: Mrs. Ples (1)

See original source for notes:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=24

[wintertime]

Please explain to me how your post relates in any way to the topic of the thread.

[Stultis]

I should have added that a more accurate figure (per my recollection of various other polls) is probably higher by at least a few points, but still in or close to the single digits.

Bear in mind that this poll was done for a particular client, The Discovery Institute, which is antievolution. I haven't looked at the poll personally yet, and am reserving judgement for the time, but I've heard that some of the questions were skewed. We'll see. Some of the figures are definitely at odds with previous polling, but some others are pretty close.

[Ichneumon]

I may be wrong - but doesn't the fossil record indicate that, if macroevolution is a reality, it occurs in sudden events?

No, at least not in the way that the word "sudden" is usually understood. It can be "sudden" from the standpoint of geologic timespans, but that's still glacierly slow from a human standpoint, taking place over timespans on the order of a million years or more.

There still isn't a missing link explanation to tie separate species together.

Actually, that's incorrect:

Index to Creationist Claims: Claim CC200: There are no transitional fossils.

Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record

On Creation Science and "Transitional Fossils"

The Fossil Record: Evolution or "Scientific Creation"

No transitional fossils? Here's a challenge...

Phylum Level Evolution

Paleontology: The Fossil Record of Life

Cuffey: Transitional Fossils

What Is A Transitional Fossil?

More Evidence for Transitional Fossils

The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence

Transitional Forms of Whales

Fossil Horses FAQs

PALAEOS: The Trace of Life on Earth

Mammaliformes: Docodonta

Transitional Fossil Species And Modes of Speciation

Evolution and the Fossil Record

Smooth Change in the Fossil Record

Transitional fossil sequence from dinosaur to bird

Transitional fossil sequence from fish to elephant

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ

Just curious. I don't know if we will ever live to witness "macroevolution".

It depends on what amount of evolution you choose to call "macroevolution". To the anti-evolutionists, it's "whatever amount of evolution is a bit beyond what we can't deny happens without looking really foolish". But in general, yeah, for extrememly significant amounts of evolutionary change, you won't be able to sit down and watch it happen, just as you can't sit down and watch a complete mountain range rise from a flat plain, or watch a full island chain like the Hawaiian Islands form. You can, however, in each case a) observe different stages of the process taking place in different examples existing today which happen to be at different stages of the process, and b) identify huge amounts of evidence indicating that the full process did take place and produce the current results.

If you look at the fossil record, to the best of my knowledge, it appears to happen rather suddenly and infrequently.

Not really, there are excellent examples of all sorts of evolutionary transitions. Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" deals with whether small changes occur in small "jumps", or whether they occur due to a sequence of even smaller changes, ad inifinitum. But larger transitions are made up of relatively smooth sequences of realitively small jumps, and there are many good fossil examples.

To think that it will be observed in our lifetimes (such a small period of time) is asking a lot. Even if it is a reality.

Correct. Which is why a) the existence of such change is determined via the investigative and validation procedures of the scientific methods instead of "direct observation" of the process from start-to-finish, and b) the anti-evolutionists are either being disingenuous or clueless when they insist on seeing direct observations of the process from start to finish before they'll stop outright rejecting the entire notion (and rejecting the VAST amounts of direct observations we have confirming the reality of the process in huge numbers of other ways).

[Stultis]

It hasn't happened within recorded history

As you know, the only remotely objective, and the most common, definition of "macroevolution" is, "evolution at or above the species level." ("Microevolution" then being evolution below the species level.) Thus any time a new species emerges, that is macroevolution by definition. As you know there have been a number of observed, and many more securely inferred, speciation events within recorded history.

Will it do any good to post the links for you yet again?

[Ichneumon]

And for the percentage (at least 25%) of Americans who believe in the Bible's creation story but also believe that "God helps those who help themselves" is a Bible verse, one is forced to deduce that public education and Christian religious education are both miserable failures in this country.

Don't put all the blame on the education systems. To paraphrase the quote, "God educates those who educate themselves". And a *lot* of people make no attempt to educate themselves, or seek out the many educational opportunities which exist.

Heck, in my experience a vast number of people actually *resist* attempts to educate them -- they prefer to cling to their current beliefs, and don't want to risk learning anything that might challenge them. I think we all know people like that, unfortunately.

And relevant to the current thread, in my 30+ years of experience with them, the anti-evolutionists have few peers in this respect. Here's a good essay by a former anti-evolutionist, who describes what it was like from the perspective of one of the formerly afflicted.

[discostu]

It hasn't happened in the part of recorded history where we've actually been paying attention to the species in an area where we had already cataloged almost all the species (check the hairy lobster thread to understand just how not fully cataloged the species of the planet really are). That's important to understand, there could have been a major macro-evolutionary explosion in South America as recently as the 1950s and we wouldn't have known about it, in Africa the window closed late in the 19th century, for the rest of the world it closed in the 17th century, prior to then we didn't have any truly serious biological sciences. So really when you're talking about the recorded history that matters for this you're only talking about 300 to 400 years, for most of mankinds recorded history we really weren't paying attention to most sciences in general or biological sciences in particular, without people paying attention to it macro-evolution could have happened right under our noses and we wouldn't have even known, without a useful species catalog there's no way to know if that new animal you saw down the street is truly "new" (macro-evolution) or just something you never noticed before.

Actually that kind of change is studied heavily, by biologists, and those biologists studies are impacting evolutionary science rather dramatically (as much as any science that doesn't involve fire, electricity or atom smashing can be dramatic).

[blowfish]

why not ask the evolutionist to show how God's word is wrong?

Which one? There are many to choose from. If you are assuming that one theology is the 'true' one, you'll need to provide evidence to back it up. All theologic texts contain patently true statements.