Gallup: 78 Percent of Americans Believe In Some Form of Creationism, Nearly Half Believe In Adam and Eve

According to a new Gallup poll, a plurality of Americans—46 percent, to be exact—believe that God made human beings just as they are today sometime in the last 10,000 years. That number is up from 40 percent in 2011 (which was down from 46 percent in 2006).

The number of people who believe God guided the process of evolution over millions of years fell from 38 percent to 32 percent in the last year; during the same period, the number of people who believe God is a lie and humans came from damn dirty apes fell from 16 percent to 15 percent.

The longview from Gallup: "Some 78% of Americans today believe that God had a hand in the development of humans in some way, just slightly less than the percentage who felt this way 30 years ago. All in all, there is no evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular viewpoint on human origins."

Comments

[AlmightyJB]

So God has an 85% defective rate? That's not very good. Good thing she doesn't operate in a free amrket. She would be out of business.

[Almanian's Evil Twin]

No Six Sigma for YOU! Give me that QS9000 flag...

[Major Pain]

Most people are by nature gullible, generally incapable of critical thinking, often poorly educated, and more than half the population compounds those characteristics with IQs at and below the mean. And then of course we have the predators that take advantage of the bewildered: Politicians, priests, and evangelists. Religion isn't going away -- it's a key power and treasure acquisition strategy.

[ancestrialLocke]

I really find some of these attacks on people who are religions as almost bigoted in some ways. So what if someone else believes something else. it is not like you are ever forced to believe the same thing so why should you care? Why would you get upset when your own right to believe something isn't endangered.

[AlmightyJB]

CDC Denies Existence Of Zombies. The cover up begins.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....tml?ref=tw

[Aresen]

They haven't seen my office come back to life at 4:30 on Friday.

[Franklin Harris]

The same government schools that fail in general unsurprisingly fail at teaching evolution. Keeping creationism out of the government schools is almost irrelevant when the schools don't bother teaching biology, evolution, and natural selection in ways students can understand and believe.

[o3]

So a belief in God = failing to teach evolution in gumint schools?

[Franklin Harris]

No. Belief that humans popped up in the last 10,000 years is.

[o3]

teaching geology archaeology solves that.

[Sudden]

teaching geology archaeology Anthropolgy solves that.

Archaeology wouldn't solve that as human civilization is roundabout 7000 years old. Delving further back into studies of tribal hunter-gatherer man places it into the study of Anthropology.

[joshua corning]

Pretty sure if your average left wing nut job ever met a man from 12,000 years ago they would think him more sub-human then a Republican.

Also I am very disappointed that I can't use my sock puppet "Kennewick Man" right now.
Damn you reason registration.

[35N4P2BYY]

But, but, teaching math and science is hard. Plus, it takes time away from the indoctrination... er... I mean teaching social issues.

[Mickey Rat]

You can teach someone what you want them to believe, but you cannot make them believe it.

[Pi Guy]

Pretty much explains my atheism.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Well, on the bright side, I won't be lacking any entertaining arguments over evolution at family gatherings anytime soon.

[kinnath]

The general population is fundamentally ignorant in all scholarly matters. Evolution is just one such matter.

[Aresen]

I often feel there should be a voter test:

1) Do you believe in astrology?
2) Do you believe that the world was created in the way described in Genesis Chapter 1? (Or the parallel Quran / Torah passages.)
3) Do you believe that the First Amendment rights of people who advocate dangerous ideas should be limited?

A "yes" answer to any of the questions would automatically cost the individual their franchise.

(NO, I don't advocate this, but I sometimes feel that way.)

[Diomasach]

The ironic thing is that anyone who did agree with this would pretty much be automatically disenfranchised based on #3 (assuming of course that they are so narrow minded as to think belief in God is "dangerous" otherwise #1 and #2 would be moot)

[Aresen]

?

Astrology is heretical under all three of the Abrahamic religions, so belief in astrology =/= belief in god.

There are also many people who believe in God who do not accept the literal interpretation of Genesis.

Neither of these beliefs is "dangerous", they are merely ignorant.

[sloopyinca]

they are merely ignorant.

I'm sorry, but ignorant of what exactly?

[Aresen]

Reality

[Diomasach]

OK, apparently you stopped reading your own post at #1. I was referring to #2 when I referenced belief in God. Try to keep up.

The point being, anyone who is a big enough asshat to want to take away the right to vote of someone just because they don't believe the same things would be disenfranchised under your rules. Rules that would only be supported by someone who is a big enough asshat to want to take away the right to vote of someone just because they don't believe the same things...

Hence Irony.

[Aresen]

Ahem.

Your comment referenced 1 AND 2, not 1 OR 2. Try to keep up.

However, I will concede there is a degree of irony, although my point was more about voter idiocy rather than their beleifs. I could just as easily suggested an inability to solve a system of diophantine equations as a test.

As I said before, I don't advocate limiting the franchise based on stupid beliefs. But I often feel that it should be limited on the basis of ability to analyse facts. (Which, of course, immediately runs into the question of "Who validates one's ability to analyse facts?")

[AlmightyJB]

Hell you don't have to prove that you're legally illegible to vote much less competent to.

[sloopyinca]

^^I forgot. Which law applies here?^^

[AlmightyJB]

RC's law? I don't remember either. It's funny that I didn't catch it at the time. I blame my not so smartphone screen:)

[sloopyinca]

It makes me harken back to the "buttonhole" autocorrect my stupid iPad made one day on here.

[Mickey Rat]

It is a good thing you don't advocate that as 2) is near certain unconstitutional (religious test). In fact, the combined effect of 2) and 3) should cost you your franchise.

[Ike]

And what percentage of the American people believe in Adam Steve??

[Joe R.]

Steve Holt!

[SIV]

Shouldn't there be an ampersand in there?

[hamilton]

The H (and) R squirrels declared jihad on ampersands.

[Pound. Head. On. Desk.]

I discovered that for myself while discussing low carb a few days ago.

[sloopyinca]

Believing in Creationism and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. I've never understood why so many fundies and atheists alike make that mistake.

[Pip]

^^THIS

[el esc?ptico]

Believing in the "Creationism" propounded by ID enthusiasts and the Discovery Institute, however, are incompatible with Darwinian evolution. I'm pretty sure that a far-too-large number of those polled were referencing this type of creationism, and not that referred to by Spinoza, et al.

[o3]

far be it for anyone to assert God didnt create evolution as well.

[o3]

far be it for anyone to assert God didnt create evolution as well.

[o3]

sorry for the 2x

[joshua corning]

far be it for anyone to assert God didnt create evolution as well.

Far be it for anyone to assert evolution didn't create god as well.

[el esc?ptico]

Mormon theology teaches that mortal men can evolve into gods if they live right and practice the appropriate voodoo. Calling it voodoo, however, does not go over well at get togethers with my mostly mormon family.

[joshua corning]

Far be it for anyone to assert evolution didn't create god as well.

If believing in god is as natural and is as much a product of evolution as breathing then why deride it as voodoo?

[el esc?ptico]

Because they make no claims to it being natural. You have to abstain from non-marital sex, coffee, alcohol, rated R movies, and quite a few of the other small joys most of us get from life so that you can qualify to partake in hocus pocus masonic-based rituals in their temples. Then you become god. Voo. Doo.

[joshua corning]

How many cultures don't have religion again?

There is a reason why that number is zero....because the cultures without evolution are all dead. (or more probable they never existed.)

If natural selection is not about those that live and those that die then i would say you have a very weak grasp about how evolution works.

[T]

"lf one does what God does enough times, one will become as God is. God's a champ. He always stays ahead. He got 140 Phillipinos in one plane crash last year."

[Carston]

Thanks for making my point for me sloopy!!!

[Mickey Rat]

Because those are the ones who take evolution to be the revealed dogma of their faith.

[Pi Guy]

Nah. You might think that from getting run off of Free Thought Blogs but atheism is more nuanced than that, much the way I imagine you'd defend (what I presume to be) your faith.

[Drake]

So 22% of the people have faith in macro-evolution despite nobody alive ever having witnessed it a high-order organism?

[el esc?ptico]

Derpity Derp Derp

[Aresen]

Nobody has actually observed a proton, either.

But the evidence is pretty conclusive.

[joshua corning]

Care to explain what a "high-order Organism" is?

Cuz last i checked bacteria do some pretty "ordered" chemical reactions...most of which humans can't do biologically or in a test tube.

[el esc?ptico]

Do you realize what a flabbergastingly stupid comment that is? Let me rephrase it for you. 22% of people understand the mechanism underlying the theory that speciation takes place on a timescale involving at a minimum tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, but not one of these humans with an average life span of around 75 to 80 years has witnessed it happen.

[Sam Grove]

The DNA evidence is pretty conclusive evidence of evolution.

[Drake]

Please elaborate. Primates have anywhere from 16 to 60 chromosomes. Yet we are locked in at 48 - any more or less leads to abnormalities not survivable in the wild.

Something far more complex is going than "survival of the fittest". Something only guessed at so far.

[Aresen]

The number of chromosomes is completely irrelevant and a very stupid straw man argument.

The sequencing of DNA - and divergence of genotype - shows very strong correlation with the inter-species relationships inferred from paleontological research.

[Drake]

So as we evolve, those chromosomes pairs just magically change once in a while?

[Aresen]

It happens.

Nothing 'magical' about it.

Read up on trisomy.

[hamilton]

Um, 46 sparky, unless you're even more special than advertised.

/snark

[Aresen]

Maybe he is a member of the Pan genus, which does have 24 chrcomosome pairs.

[Drake]

Aresen says it doesn't matter.

[Aresen]

For sequencing, it does not matter.

You are wilfully misapplying context.

[Derpy Hooves]

Religion: the only joke that makes me cry.

[joshua corning]

Lets see a system that supports organization and forms a basis for a common morality allowing people to cooperate. Insuring survival against a world that for all intents and purposes wants us all dead...

Wipe those tears from your face dumb ass.

[Derpy Hooves]

I would send you back to the Middle Ages to show you what a world running on religion looks like since little preachers like you don't have to live through it today, but Doctor Whooves is the one that controls time, not me. Now go and sooth that hurt butt and maybe get a ticket to Saudi Arabia. Do me a favour: get yourself stoned to death in that society which couldn't function without it's perfect moral guiding force called religion. Or maybe just get a limb chopped off at least.

[hamilton]

He's not saying religiously-driven societies are fun, only that the social organizing and moral help-the-weak aspects of religion facilitate cooperation that enhances a group's likelihood of survival compared to an atheistic group.

Jonathan Haidt's Righteous Mind book makes something of the same point.

[Derpy Hooves]

*coughs under breath* bullshit *coughs*. What is moral shouldn't be hellish. I believe that moral and evil and mutually contradictory. If religious societies are not "fun" as you so lovingly put it (i.e. they are hell on earth) then they are NOT moral and do not give their people a better chance of survival (or, necessarily, a worse chance of survival, although that's debatable.) Religion certainly makes people more brutal and the brutal have an upper hand over the peaceful. Your mileage may vary on the morality of that though.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

The closest to me:

Newport News VA cops investigated by FBI on allegations they beat performed roadside cavity search on son of ex-cop

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Wrong thread, dammit

[A Serious Man]

Okay, the guy is getting his cavity search, and an ACLU lawyer drives by in his car. "Hey, do you want me to order them to stop?" "No thank you. God will stop them."

The search contiunes and becomes more uncomfortable and then Judge Andrew Napolitano drives by. "Hey, that looks illegal. Do you want me to tell them to stop?" "No thank you, God will stop them."

Now the cops start beating the guy, and Ron Paul drives by. "Hey, those cops are violating your civil liberties," Paul says while holding up a copy of the Constitution. "Do you want me to tell them to stop?" "No thank you, God will stop them."

Eventually the guy dies from the beating and goes to Heaven. When he gets there he asks God why didn't he stop the assault. God says, "I sent you a civil liberties lawyer, Judge Napolitano, and Ron Paul. What the hell did youe expect?"

The threads have been harmonized.

[The Unknown Pundit]

And don't forget to tip your waitresses and bartenders.

[A Serious Man]

I read that as almost 80% of Americans believe in God as a First Cause. There's a lot of room between that notion and a literal interpretation of Genesis.

[Gojira]

This. Creationism =/= young eartherism, though a lot of people want to make that connection. The young earth theory is a minority viewpoint even amongst the devout (per polling and my own anecdotal evidence).

[Stormy Dragon]

Uh did you read the article? They specifically distinguished young eartherism from others and they were the majority of religious believers.

[Aresen]

"God mandated that species evolve" can hardly be deemed "Creationism", since it implicitly accepts that the evidence found by paleontologists is valid and that life and species have changed over the last 3.5 - 4 billion years on this planet.

However, if your definition of "creationism" includes "intelligent design", then you do have a problem with science.

[Old Mexican]

The number of people who believe God guided the process of evolution over millions of years fell from 38 percent to 32 percent in the last year; during the same period, the number of people who believe God is a lie and humans came from damn dirty apes fell from 16 percent to 15 percent.

The number of people that turned to belief in the supernatural after social scientists and technocrats poisoned the trust they may have had in the sciences, especially after the "AIDS affects all of us!" scare and Climategate, is...

[el esc?ptico]

... very, very sad.

[Suthenboy]

+100 to you Old Mexican

[Mensan]

"... humans came from damn dirty apes ..."

Humans did not just come from damn dirty apes. Humans are damn dirty apes.

[Aresen]

The rest of the apes would prefer you not mention the relationship.

[FreeLibertine]

"I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it?. "--Robert Anton Wilson

[creech]

Why does God feel the need to create in the first place?

[Mickey Rat]

When You have Eternity to kill, You need a hobby.

[Pound. Head. On. Desk.]

Sometimes eternity is a Friday night. But God went through all this just so He could burn ants?

I've always had problems with a guy (pardon me) Guy who would doom all mankind because somebody ate an apple, and then all this is solved by torturing an innocent man to death? And this is His Plan?

Why does this bring Dexter Morgan to mind?

[Pi Guy]

^THIS^

[alan_s]

Why does anything exist in the first place?

[I, Kahn OClast]

According to Quantum Mechanics it is so as to justify the state of things in the future. Should the state of things in the future fail to require existence, well, "poof" ... Yes, it's complicated.

[I, Kahn OClast]

So I have not read all 85 comment so someone may have noted this earlier.

Evolution does not say we evolved from Damn Dirty Apes, but rather that we and Damn Dirty Apes evolved from a common ancestor, which, presumably was more Damned, Dirty and Apelike than we are today.

[ancestrialLocke]

I would like to point out that evolution is a theory and most scientific theories evolve over time as more data is discovered. No one should ever accept this as fact since it is an idea of what happenned and ideas are always subject to change.

[CRW]

You are conflating the words "theory" and "fact." A fact is an observation used to support a theory. A theory explains facts, but does not enumerate them. Predictions from a theory become facts when confirmed, but a prediction can be general such as primates had a common ancestor, or specific such as the light from star XYZ will be bent by the earth's gravity when observed inline with the sun on some specific date (this experiment was used to confirm Einstein's theory of gravitation).

No theory ever becomes a "fact." Theories are models.

[CRW]

I cannot begin to express my frustration with the continued scientific ignorance of the american public. Part of this is generational, part of this is pure stubbornness, and part of this is direct resistance to supreme court cases such as Kitzmiller. Older generations are unable to accept anything that conflicts with religion. However, unless institutionally real science becomes part of the curriculum, it is likely that pseudo-science such as ID will persist.

It is going to years of court cases to finally drive religion out of the classroom and back in to the home where it belongs.