Majority of Republicans Don’t Believe in Evolution
June 11, 2007 by Michael van der Galiën
According to a gallup poll, the majority of Republicans does not believe the theory of evolution to be true. Quite remarkable, one could say, is that “even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.”
Funny enough, “about a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution’s explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were created as is about 10,000 years ago.”
Some results:
Now thinking about how human beings came to exist on Earth, do you, personally, believe in evolution, or not?
Yes: 49%
No: 48%
Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years
Definitely true: 39%
Probably true: 27%
Probably false: 16%
Definitely false: 15%
Furthermore, 38% said that they believed that “beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,” against 43% of Americans who said to believe that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so].”
Furthermore, 30% of Republicans believe in evolution, against 68% who believe that God created mankind in his its present shape. Those numbers are 61% and 37% for Independents respectively; and 57% and 40% for Democrats.
I have to admit that I find the results of this poll to be utterly amazing. In Europe, especially in the Netherlands - I am quite sure - the far majority of people have accepted evolution as the explanation of how mankind came into existence. Of course, there are Christians like me who believe that God guided the process, but most Dutch Christians do - as far as I know - believe that mankind evolved.
This means, of course, that it does not hurt Republican candidates one bit when they say that they do not believe in evolution. It might hurt them with Independents, sure, but if they want to appeal to ‘the base’ it is probably best for them to say that they believe that God created mankind 10,000 years ago and that the theory of evolution is false.
Fascinating (and to me quite shocking).
I hate questions about whether or not people “believe” in evolution. Science doesn’t give a crap whether or not you believe in it.
However, people who claim not to “believe” in evolution should show some backbone and refuse flu shots and modern antibiotics.
Andy,
As I suspect you know, many of those who say they don’t believe in evolution do believe in microevolution, and therefore accept the science of antibiotic resistance and variations in influenza from year to year.
I don’t know which delusion is worse: Denying evolution all together, or picking and choosing when evolution does occur and when it does not.
Michael,
“Fascinating (and to me quite shocking).”
This gets back to previous comments on the meaning of liberalism in America. While non-Republicans did poorer than I’d hope here too, we do see a real difference.
Economic disputes as to whether the marginal tax rate should be a couple of points higher or lower no longer define liberal versus conservative in a country where the conservative mainstream denies the basis of modern biology.
How many of the 68% are evangelicals? Because we have 100 million evangelicals (about a third of the population), most of whom vote Republican. On this and other issues they come off as anti-science. I fear we are going back to the days of the Scopes trial.
“As I suspect you know, many of those who say they don’t believe in evolution do believe in microevolution, ”
Indeed. Which, of course, is completely nonsensical. It’s just an excuse so that they don’t look totally insane when everyone clearly sees a new traits develop.
Microevolution must necessarily lead to macroevolution unless there is a magical force (say, god) preventing speciation. The fundamental biological processes are the same. Real biologists don’t even use these terms very much — it is the creationists that have popularized this false dichotomy.
So, “micro but not macro” is as patently ridiculous as denying both. At least denying all evolution is internally consistent.
It’s a case of lazy thinking and a poor education system.
It starts out early in this country with little or no focus on science and then the books are subject to political influence with no guarantee of anything factual in science books.
Where my little boy goes to school there is three hours every day of reading and language arts and science is only taught two days a week.
Of course the political divide is what this is really all about. If liberals believe evolution is true then conservatives must disagree.
A glass of water and an original idea not rooted in talking points would kill most people on both ends of the political spectrum.
This poll is the saddest thing I have seen in months.
I’m surprised at this too, but I do think part of it has to do with the way the questions are asked. It’s being framed in a way that suggests that one has to choose to either ‘believe’ in creationism or ‘believe’ in evolution. There are other choices, of course, and those who answered the survey and thought it through probably realized they could still answer the questions in a way that was consistent with that intermediate viewpoints like the one expressed by Michael (which is mine as well).
Part of the reason for all of the controversy, and resistance to people saying they “believe’ in the theory of evolution, IMO, is that it sounds like you are being asked whether or not evolution explains the origin of human existence rather than the process of it. I think if this distinction were better explained, the responses might be a bit different (still, there seem to be more people taking the strictly creationist viewpoint than I would have expected).
C Stanley
I haven’t looked closely at the questions from poll to poll, but as there have been comparable findings in other polls in the past year I suspect that this really is roughly representative of US thought.
There was also a survey in the past year which shows that belief in evolution in the US is well below belief in evolution in much of the world:
http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=22
Christine: I actually think that they could have answered the questions quite well. Yeah, it was a bit simple, but not overly simplistic.
Ron, thanks for the link - I’ll be linking to it on the frontpage today as a follow-up post.
How do you explain the people who answered that they believe in BOTH- evolution of the species and creation of man some 10,000 years ago?
I guess there is one way to view it like that: if evolution over millions of years led to the existence of some hominid species which was then invested with a soul by God around 10,000 years ago.
But somehow I don’t think that’s what most of these people are thinking; it seemed more to me like people who believe in evolution guided by God may have had difficulty figuring out which response really matched that viewpoint (because the way evolution was defined seemed to place it in opposition to a religious viewpoint, and the way creationism was defined limited it to something that happened in a fixed point of time).
But they gbave the choice “evolution guided by God.”
That 25%: I find it a bit strange as well. Makes me wonder whether 25% of the American people are illiterate?