Evolution poll
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Many polls have been conducted into people's opinion on evolution and creationism, particularly in the USA, and particularly with reference to education. The ability of opinion polls to accurately measure beliefs, as opposed to actual behavior, however, has not been demonstrated. One of the few things known with certainty about polling people to examine beliefs is that the results tend to be contradictory, difficult to interpret, and strongly influenced by the human propensity to agree with others.
For example, between 10 and 20 percent of Queensland university students responding to a 1986 poll agreed with statements supporting the evolutionary view and with statements opposing it: they agreed that "the earth is less than 10,000 years old", and also agreed that "fossils are the remains of plants and animals which have gradually accumulated in sediments over millions of years"! Similarly, 68 percent of respondents to an opinion poll in Germany said they believed in God, but 86 percent admitted to praying.
Knowledge of the particular background circumstances and the exact methods used to conduct an opinion poll is essential to its interpretation, especially so where the targeted information is an abstract belief as opposed to a concrete intention (such as buying Product X or voting for Candidate Y). In particular, the precise wording of a poll is crucial. Reports which present the "results" without describing the methods should normally be disregarded.
Here are the some of the results of a 2001 Gallup poll (http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/200103/0031.html) on creationism, evolution, and public education:
- 45% believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so
- 37% believe that human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided the process.
- 12% believe that human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.
- 6% answered "no opinion" or "other".
When asked by name whether they believe in or lean more towards the "theory of creationism" or the "theory of evolution", 57% indicated creationism, 33% indicated evolution, and 10% responded "not sure."
The United Nations "Planet Project" polled people over the Internet to get worldwide views, though those are considerably less reliable than phone polls, especially because people who cannot afford Internet access may have different beliefs from those who can. On average about 18% of Europeans polled believed that man was created divinely by God (although this does not necessarily exclude evolution of the rest of nature) and the remaining 82% believed that humans descended from other species. This result is consistent with the fact that the two largest Christian denominations in Europe are the Roman Catholic church which accepts a form of evolution, and the Lutheran church which has no official position but does not generally oppose it in practice.
See also: Educational issues