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Creationism Slips In Poll The majority of Americans believe that God was involved in creating humans, either through a single act of Creation or through a “guided” evolutionary process, according to the latest Gallup poll on the topic. Gallup has been surveying Americans on their beliefs about creationism and evolution every two years since 1982. The latest survey of about 1,000 American adults, conducted in mid-December 2010, found a slight decrease since 2008 in the percentage of Americans who believe in what Gallup calls “strict Creationism,” or that “God created human beings in their present form about 10,000 years ago.” According to the survey, 40 percent of American adults in 2010 chose Creationism as closest to their view about the “origin and development of human beings,” compared to 44 percent in 2008. Gallup notes that this represents the “lowest in Gallup’s history of asking this question” (the highest percentage of Americans to choose the Creationist view was 47 percent in 1993 and again in 1999). By comparison, 38 percent of those polled chose theistic evolution as their view, or that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.” There was a two percent increase in the percentage of Americans choosing theistic evolution as closest to their view (up from 36 percent in 2008). Only 16 percent of Americans in the survey chose a strict evolutionary view, or that “God had no part in the process” of human origin and development, up from 14 percent in 2008. According to the Gallup report, those with less education are more likely to believe in Creationism, while the higher educated (college degree or higher) are more likely to believe in evolution or that God guided the evolutionary process. The survey also found that although 60 percent of Americans who attend church weekly say that God created human beings, 31 percent say that God merely guided the evolutionary process. Among those who seldom or never attend church, the survey found that 39 percent say that God guided an evolutionary process, and 31 percent say humans simply evolved, while 24 percent say that God created humans. The Gallup report points out that the views of Americans on the issues of creationism and evolution “have been generally stable” in the past 28 years. “Acceptance of the creationist viewpoint has decreased slightly over time, with a concomitant rise in acceptance of a secular evolution perspective,” the report states. “But these shifts have not been large, and the basic structure of beliefs about human beings' origins is generally the same as it was in the early 1980s.” Related resources: Copyright © 2011. North Carolina Family Policy Council. All rights reserved.
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