Rethinking the Origins Debate

In 2012, a Gallup poll found that 46 percent of U.S. adults believed "God created humans pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Thirty-two percent believed humans evolved with God's guidance, and 15 percent believed humans evolved with no divine guidance at all. The responses to this question, which Gallup has included 11 times on polls since 1982, have been remarkably stable over a 30-year period of time. The findings, showing a public evenly split over the issue of human evolution, have been corroborated in several other national surveys.

These surveys portray a deeply divided and polarized public. Even among the majority who believe that God created humans, the chasm separating creationist and evolutionist views appears to be gargantuan. Are Americans really this divided over human origins?

As a social scientist, I am skeptical about these findings for two reasons. First, the way in which these questions about human origins are written restricts complex or conflicted responses. Surveys like the Gallup poll tend to represent the various views we might label Atheistic Evolution, Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, or Young Earth Creationism with position statements that force respondents to select the one that comes closest to their beliefs.

The trouble is that these various views contain multiple beliefs about common descent, natural selection, divine involvement, and historical timeframe. The survey questions conflate these underlying beliefs in particular ways and force individuals to select from prepackaged sets of ideas. This is simply a practical necessity given the limited amount of space on general public surveys.

Second, these polls give us no description of the manner in which people hold to these beliefs. Are respondents confident that their position is correct? Is it important to them personally to have the right beliefs about human origins? If large segments of the public are uncertain about their position, or if their beliefs are unimportant to them, then the idea of an intensely polarized public is misleading.

As part of a recent project funded by the BioLogos Foundation, I have fielded a new, nationally representative survey of the American public: The National Study of Religion and Human Origins (NSRHO).

Unlike existing surveys, this one includes extensive questions about human origins that allow us to develop a more accurate portrait of what the general public—and, in particular, Christians—actually believe. The survey includes questions on belief in human evolution, divine involvement, the existence of Adam and Eve, historical timeframe, original sin, and more. For each of these questions, participants are allowed to respond with "not at all sure" about what they believe. If they claim a position, they are also asked to rate how confident they are that their belief is correct. Lastly, they are asked to report how important having the right beliefs about human origins is to them personally.

Let's look at the creationist position. It contains, at a minimum, the following beliefs:

    Humans did not evolve from other species.
    God was involved in the creation of humans.
    Humans were created within the last 10,000 years.