Posted on 10/23/2009 8:18:13 PM PDT by john in springfield
After spending time on some of the recent discussions here at FR about Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and other points of view (which I will call Old Earth Creationism (OEC) and Naturalistic Evolution), I found myself wondering: how many FReepers (and how many Americans) hold each particular view?
Obviously, there aren't any statistics on FReepers. But there are on Americans as a whole, and on certain groups of Americans.
The best general resource I've found so far on people's viewpoints is located here. I will summarize some of those here.
(Note: This page uses slightly different terms for a couple of these viewpoints, but as far as I can tell, they mean the same thing.)
About 45% accept the Young Earth Creationist viewpoint, about 37% accept the Old Earth Creationist viewpoint, and around 12% to 14% accept the Naturalistic Evolution viewpoint.
This has held fairly steady over the past 25 years or so. The percentage who believe in NE may have increased slightly, but overall, the numbers have held fairly steady.
A CBS News poll gave a bit different percentages: YEC 55%, OEC 27%, NE 13%.
Observations:
There are a lot of people who believe in young earth creationism, and there are also a lot of people who believe in old earth creationism as well.
The vast majority of Americans believe in God.
The majority of Americans believe in evolution.
The numbers change significantly among the college-educated:
YEC: 25%
OEC: 54%
NE: 17%
It is interesting to me that most - a full 54% - college-educated Americans accept the Old-Earth Creationist (or theistic evolutionist) view.
Note also the effect that a college education seems to have: With a few exceptions, people who go to college don't stop believing in God. However, quite a few do seem to shift from YEC to OEC.
This graph also means that an awful lot of people who don't go to college believe in YEC rather than in either OEC or NE.
Note that while this poll is nearly 20 years old, based on what we know from some other polls, overall beliefs do not seem to have changed greatly during this time.
YEC: 5%
OEC: 40%
NE: 55%
Note: The word "scientist" seems to be very vague in this poll, which apparently includes a lot of people with professional degrees in fields completely unrelated to biology, geology, etc.
In any event, a majority of "scientists" don't seem to believe that God was involved in the development of life on earth. It's not a very large majority, though. "Scientists" are divided as to whether God was involved. Most of those who think He was believe that this involvement included the process of evolution.
However, given that only 5% of "scientists" support YEC, the under-1% figure may well be true. I just don't know. Nor do I have access to the original 1987 Newsweek article to see exactly how they got their information.
If there's another poll or two out there on this, it might be interesting to know about.
A 2007 Harris Poll showed the following percentages of Christians who accept the theory of evolution:
Catholics: 43%
Protestants: 30%
"Born-Again Christians": 16%
Finally, a 2005 CBS Poll stated that a full two thirds (67%) of Americans believe that it's possible for one to believe both in God and in evolution.
There is no list of what was on or not on the ark.
Now when you say obviously vegetation had begun to grow, you say this because there had to be food for the animals to eat right?
I know there was no actual list. The passage from Genesis highlighted above though suggests that all of the animals that were in existence at the time, made their way onto the ark. Again, unless I am missing something, this is the way I interpret it. Am I in error somewhere?
What did the dove bring back?
What plants growing at that time would or would not survive isn’t known but seeds? Perhaps, but as I note, the Bible is just silent on that. Since Noah became a farmer with a vineyard after coming out maybe uneaten grain or perhaps vines survived the waters? The Bible just doesn’t say.
Apples/oranges. If anything those numbers show a drop in people who believe in evolution, because the previous answers allowed a person to have belief in evolution with God guiding the process. Therefore you would add two separate groups to end up with believers of evolution, those that believed God did not have a hand and those that believed he did. The last gallop poll had the total at 50%.
Yes.
You are leaving out the words 'kind' and 'sort', (not intentionally of course).
Unless someone has an ax to grind against the Bible, those words could very well refer to very general groups of creatures.
God gave the instructions for the size of the ark based upon the capacity He knew to be necessary for at least two of what He referred to as each 'kind' to fit on board.
So the words used are 'kind' and 'sort', whatever that may mean exactly.
Good day.
Wouldn’t all the seeds that floated be roasted to death by the superheated water and lava?
Have owned a pharmaceutical life-cycle management consulting firm for >20 years.
Have owned a pharmaceutical life-cycle management consulting firm for >20 years.
The animals ate olives when they got off of the ark? Is that what you mean?
And a business owner to boot. Very, VERY IMPRESSIVE!
I dont know. I had never thought about it before. Where did the food come from? Perhaps they ate fish?
The really old fossil record comes from the flood described in Genesis 1:2, Peter in IIPeter 3 calls it the age that WAS .."Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water perished:"
Hm. Since 1982, the number of people who believe in natural evolution increased by over 55%. The other categories either decreased or remained the same. I wonder if that is meaningful?
I appreciate you reasoned reply to GGG... it’s not always the case.
I noticed something in your reply I wanted to respond to. I think the point about who is and who is not a Christian is a very good one. For all intents and purposes, it looked as if Paul was still unwilling to call himself a Christian by the end of his life. He was still pressing on toward the goal of the high calling of Christ Jesus. Yet, you brought out several times in your response the things you do that may make you better than another or maybe less, and that’s not what Paul preached at all. Although he made it clear that faith without works is dead, he also made it clear that getting to heaven was not predicated by ones actions, but by belief in Christ as the Son of God and acceptance of Him as the Savior.
I know you’ve probably heard all these things, but it’s easy to forget what salvation is all about when everything we do is built upon some accomplishment, goal or productive moment in our lives... we want to leave something behind; some kind of legacy. I don’t think you have to call yourself the name ‘Christian’ in order to be saved, and I’d hate to see someone miss it because of a matter of semantics.
God bless.
Gordon
I guess I am puzzled by the fact that the fossil record shows such bizzare animals. Is it possible that Noah took some lizards aboard and considered them to be representative of dinosaurs...enough such that he felt it was OK to let those mammoth beasts perish?
They took provisions aboard for themselves and the animals according to Bible. Fish? Not likely.
How did you get into the consulting business?
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