Binary Oasis

Newsweek published some interesting survey results this week. If I had to summarize the main thrust of the survey, I’d say that it concerned religious belief systems and how it shapes ideas about evolution. Surveys can be colored to support a particular bias, but this particular subject matter is straightforward enough, and I can’t see any motivation for Newsweek to try to skew the results, so I assume that they are credible and representative.

Getting to the point, a few of the results of the survey are as follows:

• 91% of American adults believe in God
• 82% identify themselves as Christians
• 48% reject the theory of evolution
• 34% say that they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact
• 73% of Evangelical Protestants believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years

Apparently just about 40% of Catholic and non-Evangelical Protestants believe that last statement (that is, that God created human in their present form within the last 10,000 years).

This is very interesting to me. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we learn and form our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. On those subjects that have any degree of complexity, or those subjects for which we gain the knowledge indirectly, we very often rely on sources that we believe to be credible. If I am correct, the “credible source” that shaped the thought of Evangelical Protestants is Henry Morris. For a slightly younger generation (perhaps those in their 20’s and 30’s), Ken Ham has been the source.

To the consternation of many Evangelicals, Young Earth Creationism has fallen out of favor with many Christians. I suspect that there are a number of interworking factors behind this trend, but perhaps the most significant factor was the rallying of a particular credentialed community to create a structured argument for Intelligent Design. This community was (and still is, I assume) comprised of individuals from a variety of faiths, but each was/is trying to use scientific principles, logic, and philosophy to build support for a theistic world view. While the impact of the ID argument has been limited outside of Christian circles (and other theistic circles), it did have the impact of opening many eyes within the Christian community. As a general rule, ID accepts the old universe (i.e. 13 to 14 billion years old), though ID’s proponents typically deny that evolution can explain the variety of life that we see on earth.

So here we stand with a seemingly insurmountable gulf between the belief system of Christianity and the theory of evolution (which, as I understand, is nearly universally accepted by those in the bioligical sciences). Where do we go from here? If Francis Collins has his way, we will try to bridge these together. Could we actually believe both in God and evolution without destroying one or the other? Collins believes so. In his book The Language of God, Collins argues for the existence of a personal God, and he also argues that we have, in DNA evidence, compelling and indisputable fingerprints of evolution.

It’s easy enough for a Christian to accept the argument that an atheist only believes in evolution because of his bias against God. It’s not as easy to reject a credible and accomplished Christian physician and geneticist like Dr. Collins. For that reason, I suspect that his book would receive a more than a mention if we were to compare the survey results of a similar Newsweek poll 10 years into the future. My own opinion is that the statistics will slowly change, with fewer Christians viewing evolution as a hostile ideology and more Christians viewing it as pretty good science and the best science that we have to offer.

6/12/07 edit: an updated poll and analysis.