Pew Research over-estimates creationism in America

I’m not at all surprised at this.

It is well known that, in public opinion research, how the questions are asked can affect the results.

In addition, we make the mistake when we assume that a person either believes or disbelieves in something (such as creationism). People can have strong beliefs, and they can have weak wavering beliefs. People can have beliefs that are important to them (that affect how they live their lives), and people can have beliefs of very little importance that have almost no effects on how they live their lives.

Yes, there are problem creationists who believe very strongly in their creationism and who participate in public discussions about this. But there probably aren’t very many of those.

OK, but look at what actually happened here, the percentage of “Evolution, God had no role” went from 40% to 33%, I would say creationism was underestimated, not overestimated.

If you combine no evolution + God guided evolution you go from 58% to 66%. Am I missing something here?

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I agree. This is really confusing.

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Most of the people who changed, probably don’t have strong beliefs one way or the other. They are unsure, and that’s why the wording of the question affects how they answer.

I’m not particularly troubled that there are many people who are unsure about evolution.

But the title of the article is misleading to me. I get that they are not putting God-guided evolution in the creationist camp, but I think that’s poor sociology. They clearly believe in God as the creator of the universe.

What the article shows me is that most Americans are more concerned about the universe being attributed to God’s creative work than how he did it.

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I agree with you that most people would like to believe that BOTH their religious beliefs and science is true. Since most people publicly state that they believe in God and believe in science, I would expect that the God Guided Evolution would be the largest group by far.

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Titles are often misleading. They are designed to get the readers attention, rather than to summarize the article.