46% of Americans Cling to Creationism
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.
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
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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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Americans’ discomfort with other peoples' religious faiths goes hand in hand with Islamophobia. Americans’ discomfort with other peoples' religious faiths goes hand in hand with Islamophobia.
"The majority of Americans identify technically as Christians,” writes Amanda Marcotte at AlterNet, “but a deeper look at how our people act, believe, and think shows that we’re not at all a ‘Christian nation,’ but a largely secular nation that suffers a small but vocal minority of theocracy-minded conservatives.”
People who knew the man accused of gunning down three Muslim American students in North Carolina -- an act many suspect to be a hate crime motivated by cultural differences -- describe him as angry and lacking compassion.
Primatologist Frans de Waal pays religion the ultimate atheist compliment: Religion is so great that we humans acquired it through the natural process of evolution.Primatologist Frans de Waal pays religion the ultimate atheist compliment in his book: Religion is so great that we humans acquired it through the natural process of evolution.
"The appearance of atheists, a growing wariness of religious controls on society, as well as the continuing lure of jihad and ultraconservatism signal a breakdown in the conformity and consensus that has marked the Saudi religious field in the recent past," Caryle Murphy writes at GlobalPost.
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