46% of Americans Cling to Creationism

Posted on Jun 9, 2012

Amy Watts (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A Gallup poll last month revealed that almost half of Americans are anti-empiricists—that is, they trust ancient descriptions of the world they live in over scientific explanations developed through a direct experience of it.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe that a deity created humans in their present form some time in the last 10,000 years, according to what respondents told pollsters. The percentage has changed little in the last 30 years, during which time the backlash against teaching evolution in public schools has continued, if not expanded, with great strength.

One-third of Americans said humans evolved with God’s guidance. Fifteen percent said humans evolved, but God had nothing to do with it.

A 58 percent majority of Republicans hold the creationist view of the origin of human life. Forty-one percent of Democrats agree, along with 39 percent of self-described Independents.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly

Gallup Politics:

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.

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