Jun 26 2008
New Gallup Poll on Creation and Evolution
The Gallup polling organization has been collecting data for over 20 years about American attitudes toward creation and evolution. They have just published their latest data, and it is not surprising in that the numbers are basically unchanged from previous surveys. Here they are:
As you can see, those lines are pretty flat. This suggests that we have not been making much progress in the last two decades improving public understanding of and acceptance of evolutionary theory. However, the situation may not be as bad as it at first seems.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that the way in which questions are asked has a dramatic effect on the answer. This Gallup poll has been critiqued in the past (and this still applies) because it asks the question in such a way that affirming evolution is equated to rejecting God. The phrase “God had no part” is likely to mean to many people of faith as being equivalent to there being no God or that God is entirely uninvolved. This is therefore likely to inflate the number of people saying that evolution is “God guided” – even among those who have a good understanding and acceptance of evolutionary theory. Although this category will also contain Intelligent Design proponents who believe that evolution could not have happened without the hand of God (sorry, I mean “ID”) pushing it along. This survey does not allow us to distinguish.
A separate poll by Gallup asked about belief in the bible.
Here we can see that over the same period of time belief in the literal truth of the bible decreased from 38% to 31%. This is interesting because it shows a change not reflected in the numbers for belief in a recent creation, and also because the numbers are much lower – 31% believe in the literal truth of the bible but 44% in a recent creation. I would think that these numbers would be closer. This means that there are factors influencing the poll numbers that are not immediately apparent.
Here is a Harris poll from 2005 showing very similar numbers to the Gallup poll with a slightly different question. The statement, “Yes, I believe plants and animals have evolved from some other species” was agreed to by 49% of Americans and the statement, “No, I do not believe plants and animals have evolved from some other species” was agreed to by 45%. This is interesting because it eliminated mention of God, but yielded very similar numbers.
A 2004 Newsweek poll asked: “Do you think the scientific theory of evolution is well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community, or that it is not well-supported by evidence and many scientists have serious doubts about it?” The results – 45% say it is accepted, 42% say there are doubts. Again – very similar numbers to the other polls.
What I take from all this is that there is a solid 42-44% of Americans who are full-blown creationists. They believe God created life as is and they do not accept evolution. These people likely are filled with misinformation and propaganda about evolution and simply do not understand the modern scientific theory of evolution or the lines of evidence for it. These are the, “If humans evolved from apes why are there still apes” crowd.
The other 56% of Americans range the spectrum of acceptance of evolution. Most probably generally accept evolution but either are not well educated about it or are trying to accommodate their religious faith to it.
Another aspect of the new Gallup poll, and one that was widely reported given that it is an election year, is the difference in attitudes among political parties. Belief in creation without evolution was 60% for Republicans, 38% for Democrats, and 40% for Independents. I did not find this result terribly surprising or interesting – conservatives tend to be religiously conservative. I don’t think we can infer much else from these numbers, given all the variables that were not tracked by the poll.
I don’t think as skeptics and scientists who have been promoting understanding of evolution we should be too pessimistic about the numbers. The 44% of Americans who are creationists are likely out of our reach – as long as they are being taught from the pulpit that evolution is evil. How we are doing with the other 56% isn’t really being measured by this poll. The only number that may suggest how we are doing is those who accept evolution without any roll for God, and that number was up from 9% to 14%.
Also – even though we may not be able to nudge the 44%, all of the efforts by the Discovery Institute, the Creation Museum, and the other creationist kooks in the world have not increased the number either. I think that is in large part due to the strength of evolutionary theory (it helps that it is scientifically rock solid) and to the efforts of skeptics opposing the creationists at every turn. Special mention has to go to Eugenie Scott at the National Center for Science Education who has been tirelessly on the front lines of this struggle for years.
22 Responses to “New Gallup Poll on Creation and Evolution”
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In the November 2007 edition of Reports of the National Center for Science Education was an article titled: “Polls Apart on Human Origins”. Unfortunately, the NCSE published that particular article online (http://www.ncseweb.org/newsletter.asp?curiss=65).
It basically illustrated how the exact phrasing of the survey question sharply impacts responses. Makes me wonder whether any such poll results are of any use. Even a small amount of unintentional bias would change the results.
In a similar vein, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://religions.pewforum.org/) recently released a new study about belief in God, summarized on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91831930). When asked simply if they believe in God, 92% of people say yes. Then asked about how confident they are God exists, or whether God impacts their life, the number of “true believers” drops to about 50%.
I always wonder why we Americans are so enamored of polls.
oops make that they DIDN’T publish that article on-line.
I find it a little ironic that, according to these polls, the huge number of Americans who don’t believe in evolution hasn’t changed significantly over the last twenty years, yet during that same twenty years a Michigan State University biologist and his team conducted a continuous experiment in which E. coli bacteria were proven to have evolved over some 44,000 generations to better adapt to their controlled, stressful environment.
http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/06/02/a_new_step_in_evolution.php
Evolution in bacteria does not equate to or necessarily imply evolution in humans, but the creationists are nevertheless so afraid of losing any one member in their house of cards that they refuse to accept this clear and superbly documented experiment. (I won’t bother to link to Conservapedia, but the evidence of the creationists’ baseless and abject denial is there and elsewhere.)
Phrasing is everything. More difficult is that different people will read/hear the same phrase quite differently.
In the Gallup poll, the three choices were (paraphrased): 1. God guided over millions of years, 2. God had no part over millions of years, and 3. God created humans 10K years ago.
At first reading #2 implied to me that although God exists he had no part in the long evolution of man, which I understand is not its intended meaning, but that was my first take upon reading it and my errant first interp makes little sense so I’d have avoided it, no realizing its intent is what I believe.
Again, pursuant to my blog-de-plume, maybe the flat lines delineating little movement over decades means people aren’t listening to or heeding creationists *or* scientists.
Since the most of people have a measure of common sense but not so many are scientifically articulate, I’m guessing (hoping) it all means they know codswallop when they hear it (creationism), but haven’t the knowledge base to consider evolution very deeply. IOW, they already know religion but science still eludes. That drop of 38% to 31% in true believers may reflect this.
Just for comparison, I’d love to get some polling data on a question like:
Which comes closest to your views: 1) Planets travel in their orbits, God guided, 2) Planets travel in their orbits, God has no part, 3) God created the planets in their orbits within the last 10,000 years
What I want to see is a regional poll. I personally only know a couple YEC and I have many religious friends. However I am from Brooklyn and have lived my entire life in North Eastern metropolitan areas. I suspect the numbers are inversely proportional to population density.
The stability of the numbers reminds me of how certain polls don’t seem to go below a minimum of about a quarter of the population.
What should we see in this? If we were to subtract this number from the 40 to 45 percent (I’m giving it a more uncertain imputed accuracy deliberately) is it possible that this group is more likely to be vulnerable to persuasion by skeptics? How can they be identified?
Just a thought.
The high proportion of YECs demonstrates that the Casey Luskin rhetoric about people looking at the science and rejecting evolution is false. These people don’t care about the science. Their rejection of evolution has nothing to do with the scientific merits of evolutionary theory.
I agree with DevilsAdvocate’s analysis.
Also, the considerable drop in the numbers of believers in the biblical inerrancy is a great success, far more so than Steven concedes. Just consider how dangerous, disruptive, and unopened to dialogue these people are, and you will see that we are assisting at a resounding victory of great implications.
It’s important to translate these percentage into actual figures, even considering wide margins of error, we are talking of millions of people who abandoned fundamentalism.
I wholeheartedly agree with b_calder and decius here. One of the most important groups to focus on are apostates from fundamentalism. Because most abandon the hatred and the biblical literalism (and the young-Earth creationism that goes with it) while remaining Christians, religious scientists such as Ken Miller are extremely important. I think that polarizing influences (such as “Expelled” on one side and Richard Dawkins on the other) may do quite some harm by reinforcing the conflict between fundamentalism and science.
You consistently refuse to differentiate between a theory of evolution in general, and the theory proposed by Darwin.
I also wonder why you are so committed to convincing the world that a particular theory of evolution is correct.
I think pec owns the rights to strawman argumentation.
Pec, the ‘theory proposed by Darwin’ was proposed over 140 years ago. I hear its been augmented somewhat since then by ongoing research.
Pec,
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
If you are not just a dedicated troll, you may want to advance your understanding of what is commonly referred to as Evolutionary Theory.
As DevilsAdvocate has pointed out, the Theory since Darwin has advanced a great deal and has even expanded to accommodate some corollary theories which are very recent.
The whole lot goes under the name of Modern Synthesis.
Please, read at least the wiki entry, it will help you not to make a fool of yourself the next time around.
Also, an article is just a starting point, don’t forget to check out your local library and book stores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis
decius, that was a valuable reference and goes to show pec has had some value as a gadfly, if nothing else.
It’s also my recollection that pec has been particularly troubled with the limitations of the “mutations explain everything” doctrine, but again has only been able to express this with the usual incoherent rumblings of his gut. I suggest that he also look into this reference, which adds some coherence to those rumblings:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8-Xm_gQgboUC&dq=Origination+of+Organismal+Form&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0
I think it’s pretty clear pec is of the big picture, anti-science, contrarian, would-be woomeister sort and not into actual details – or self illumination.
Ah, but must not sustenance be offered to all that hunger regardless of their digestive apparatus – and what is the lamp of knowledge for, if not to illuminate the darkest of our cornered?
Theories of evolution were around before Charles Darwin. Current science education probably neglects to mention that, and it’s obvious most of you have never tried to learn about anything that wasn’t going to be on the test.
pec, pec, must I continue to remind you that most PhDs were not awarded through the multiple choice process.
Pec,
Regardless if the science curriculum mentions or not early hypotheses about the fact of evolution, it is entirely irrelevant to your charge that Steven should specify what he is talking about, because everyone understands.
Except you, that is.
http://www.clickcaster.com/resource/image/540296
AHAHAHAHAHAH
lol