Saturday, August 22, 1998

Biblical version of creation passes muster with Americans

By STEPHEN HUBA

Scripps Howard News Service

Americans have much stronger belief in the Bible's creation story than do Europeans, Canadians and citizens of other industrialized nations, a University of Cincinnati public opinion researcher said.

In one of the first studies of its kind, UC political science professor George Bishop compared the beliefs of Americans on human origins with those in other advanced countries.

Bishop found that the belief in creationism is much higher in America than elsewhere.

"Nearly a third of college graduates in recent Gallup polls still believe in the biblical account of creation," Bishop said. "This is somewhat of a theoretical riddle."

Bishop's cross-national study will be published in the August/September issue of The Public Perspective, a journal of the Roper Center. Bishop first presented his findings in May at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

Citing Gallup and other public opinion polls since the early 1980s, Bishop said about 45 percent of Americans believe that God created man "pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

Another 40 percent believe that man developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life but that God guided this process - what Bishop calls "theistic evolution."

And 10 percent of Americans hold the Darwinist evolution position that man developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life but that God had no part in the process.

Bishop said the results are explained, in part, by a long-standing, shared "religious worldview" in America and a national willingness to take the Bible literally.

Bishop said he was "astounded" by the findings.

By comparison, only 7 percent of those surveyed in Great Britain said they take the biblical creation account of Genesis 1 literally, he said. Respondents in Germany, Norway, Russia and the Netherlands all ranked significantly lower than the United States in biblical literalism.

"The scientific worldview has thus far failed to complete Darwin's revolution in the land of 'One Nation Under God,' " Bishop wrote in a summary of his findings.

In the surveys Bishop examined, groups most likely to accept the biblical account of human origins were women, older Americans, the less well-educated, Southerners, African Americans and fundamentalist Protestants.

The American tendency to believe in biblical creationism also means America has ranked low on international surveys that measure scientific literacy, he said.

"We don't stack up very well as a nation," Bishop said. "Religious belief tends to be inversely correlated with what most scientists would say is simple fact."

Bishop said he is not implying that religious people are uneducated; simply that they don't accept the "fact" of evolution.

The study bothers Jim Eichenberger, author of a new video course on human origins and curriculum development editor for Cincinnati-based Standard Publishing.

Eichenberger called Bishop's assumptions "arrogant."

"It's not ignorant to question a purely naturalistic system of origins," Eichenberger said. "This is a good question that thinking people need to ask: How did we get here and why does it matter?"

Just as important as a belief in God as creator is how that belief influences behavior, Eichenberger said.

"Is it just lip service," he said, "or does it mean something?"

Ken Ham, executive director and founder of Answers in Genesis, said Bishop's findings show that creation science organizations such as his are getting the word out.

"I believe that when people are taught science correctly, they see that evolution is just a belief and not scientific fact," Ham said.

Another explanation for the majority belief in creationism, Bishop said, may be that it creates a "spiral of silence," a climate where people with agnostic or atheistic beliefs are reluctant to state their views.

In one survey of 17 developed nations, Americans were the most likely to accept the Bible as "the actual word of God ... to be taken literally, word for word," and the least likely to call the Bible "an ancient book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man."

The countries most like the United States in religious beliefs are Ireland and Northern Ireland, Bishop said.

Survey data indicate that there is a substantial split between scientists and the general public on beliefs about human evolution, Bishop said.

Only 5 percent of American natural and physical scientists believe in the biblical creationist view, according to one survey. Fifty-five percent endorse the Darwinist position, and 40 percent accept theistic evolution.

The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology identifies yet another position, that of "progressive creationism." Adherents accept the six-day account of creation in Genesis 1 but do not insist on literal 24-hour days.

(Stephen Huba reports on religion for The Cincinnati Post.)