In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins

From: http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/Hold-Creationist-View-Human-Origi...

"Despite the many changes that have taken place in American society and culture over the past 30 years, including new discoveries in biological and social science, there has been virtually no sustained change in Americans' views of the origin of the human species since 1982. The 46% of Americans who today believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years is little changed from the 44% who believed this 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question.

More broadly, 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.

Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution. Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief, at least as measured by this question wording, that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature."

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I am totally disappointed, but ultimately not surprised.

Views: 22

Tags: Creationism, Gallup, US, evolution, survey

Comment by Heather Spoonheim on June 3, 2012 at 12:45am

I really see this as a stumbling block for the U.S.  While other countries are moving forward, developing a population that can make factual evaluations, the U.S. stagnates in Bronze Age mythology that is increasingly anti-intellectual.  When a Texas governor can garner support for a 'prayer rally' to intervene in a failing economy while economists are heckled as 'elitists' the only future I see is a once proud nation fading from memory after becoming a planetary embarrassment.

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