A Gallup poll finds that belief in Young Earth Creationism is at a record low but there's still plenty of cause for concern

Jul 26, 2024

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The good news is that belief in Young Earth Creationism is at an all-time low while acceptance of evolution (without any guidance from a higher power) is at an all-time high.

The bad news is that Creationism is still more popular than reality.

Gallup announced the numbers this week based on a poll taken in May:

You can see from the chart that only 37% of Americans say God created humans in our present form sometime within the past 10,000 years. I say “only” because that’s still a point lower than the record-low 38% that believed it in 2017.

Meanwhile a steadily rising 24% of Americans say we evolved over millions of years and “God had no part in this process.” Another 34% say we evolved with God’s help, a bizarre compromise position that has just as much evidence—none—in support of it as Creationism. It’s just a way for religious people to reconcile their irrational beliefs with the evidence.

It won’t surprise you that 61% of weekly church attendees buy into Young Earth Creationism compared to only 24% of those who rarely attend. So do 43% of Americans without a college degree compared to 26% with one. The God-guided evolution people tend to be political moderates, semi-weekly churchgoers, and Catholics.

The more often you go to church, and the less formal education you have, the more likely you are to believe the lie that the Bible is literally true. It’s what researchers1 call Ken Ham’s Core Constituency. It’s so outlandish that even Pat Robertson used to say, “I don’t think most Christians are stupid enough” to buy into Young Earth Creationism.

Gallup concludes:

As Americans have become less religious over the past four decades, their beliefs about the origin of humans have shifted, with fewer now saying God created human beings in their present form and more saying humans evolved without God’s help from less advanced forms of life over millions of years. Combined with the one-third of Americans who believe God guided evolution, a majority of U.S. adults thus believe humans evolved, yet a different majority still believe God played at least somewhat of a role in humankind’s existence.

All of this comes at a time when church leaders and red state government officials continue spreading misinformation about human origins. Hell, in 2023, West Virginia lawmakers introduced a bill that would allow science teachers to bring “Intelligent Design” into the classroom. While that particular bill didn’t pass, a watered down version of it became law this past April.

If there’s any silver lining to all this, it’s that Gallup found in 2022 that a record-low 20% of Americans believe the Bible is literally true, down from a record-high of 40% in 1984. The United States has also seen a rise in Secular Americans for the past two decades. In fact, fewer than half of all Americans now say they are 100% certain of God’s existence. That number is remarkably (and disappointingly) high, but it’s still heading in the right direction.

All of this might be cause for some celebration if not for the fact that so many prominent, powerful, elected Republicans and their allies believe the Bible is literally true and that it ought to be a guidebook for our nation. As Katherine Stewart once wrote in the New York Times, “Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.” They believe the Bible should supersede the Constitution when it comes to laws they don’t like. And as we’ve seen with reproductive rights, vaccine mandates, public school curricula, and more, the biblical literalists are eager to impose their beliefs on the vast majority of Americans who don’t share their faith, much less an extremist interpretation of their holy book. Just because the evolution/Creationism controversy appears to be over doesn’t mean the same Christians aren’t trying to shove their religion into schools in other ways.

So while fewer Americans than ever are biblical literalists when it comes to Creation, they still wield plenty of power over our political process.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)