Who believes in "Creationism"?

[Bobotheoptimist]

@Johnny_L.A

At the forum attached to a gun auction site it’s frightening to see the number of posters who believe in Creationism. It’s almost as frightening as their spelling!

Some people would loose there mind trying to read that stuff. Youd think their was noone that got passed third grade over their.

I don’t know which forum Johnny is talking about, but one of those I frequent really does have way too many people like above. A few grammar nazi’s fighting a losing battle (or “loosing”, as they’d say), and I’d guess at least a quarter are literalistic in their interpretation of the bible. Young-earth creationists, that is. Another quarter are agnostic/atheist, and probably half are just there to talk about guns and shooting sports so I’ve no idea what their beliefs might be. That’s not a representative sample of the general population, I hope.

[CC]

Does it seem self-evident that gun nuts and creationists and poorly educated people should show up in the same place?

[Una_Persson]

@CC

Does it seem self-evident that gun nuts and creationists and poorly educated people should show up in the same place?

No.

[Colibri]

@CC

Does it seem self-evident that gun nuts and creationists and poorly educated people should show up in the same place?

[Moderating]

Let’s not continue with this particular hijack, please. That goes for everyone. Let’s stick to the issue of belief in creationism.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Cyberhwk]

@thelurkinghorror

I can’t find the original paper that ranked them, but here’s a similar one (pdf).

Check out page 36. He cites Jack Chick.

[Svejk_1]

@CannyDan

Thanks, that’s a start. Who else is “non literalist”? European Christians? Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists? Some of each?

Do note that to speak of ‘European Christians’ is as ludicrous as speaking of American Christians, if not more so. That said, I’d venture that literal belief of the bible, or belief in miracles, for instance, is probably lower amongst most groups of Christians in Europe when compared to similar groups in the US.

[Northern_Piper]

@CannyDan

If nothing else, we can at least separate out Catholicism. What about its derivative, the Church of England?

The CoE has recently set up a series of webpages on Darwin, to commemorate the bicentennial of his birth: Church of England marks Darwin’s contribution to science as bicentenary approaches. One of those pages is entitled: Good religion needs good science:

In science, hypotheses are meant to be constantly tested. Subsequent generations have built on Darwin’s work but have not significantly undermined his fundamental theory of natural selection. There is nothing here that contradicts Christian teaching. Jesus himself invited people to observe the world around them and to reason from what they saw to an understanding of the nature of God (Matthew 6: 25–33). Christian theologians throughout the centuries have sought knowledge of the world and knowledge of God. For Thomas Aquinas there was no such thing as science versus religion; both existed in the same sphere and to the same end, the glory of God. Whilst Christians believe that the Bible contains all that we need to know to be saved from our sins, they do not claim that it is a compendium of all knowledge.

And a Times article on the purpose of the webpages: Anglicans back Darwin over ‘noisy’ Creationists.

See also this webpage of the Episcopal Church of the US: Science, Technology and Faith:

Has the Episcopal Church spoken on the creationists’ claims?

In 1982, General Convention passed a resolution (a) to “affirm its belief in the glorious ability of God to create in any manner,” (b) “and in this affirmation reject the rigid dogmatism of the ‘Creationist’ movement” and (c) further affirmed “our support of the scientists, educators, and theologians in the search for truth in this creation that God has given and entrusted to us.”

[CannyDan]

Excellent cites! Thanks to all. I’ll attempt to synopsize.

My OP asked to support the contention that total rejection of evolutionary theory in favor of Biblical literalism (loosely described as ‘creationism’) is a minority belief among Christians. This appears to be confirmed.

Although adherents even within each denomination may vary in beliefs, thereby making it impossible to assign exact numbers to large groups, it still seems possible to reach some generalized conclusions.

Partial summary: (from http://www.strategicnetwork.org/pdf/kb16424.pdf - PDF!)
worldwide 2.1 billion Christians
breakdown:
1.1 billion Catholic
426 million “Independent” (“separated from, uninterested in, and independent of historic denominational Christianity”)
375 million Protestant
219 million Orthodox
79 million Anglican
34 million “marginal” (Witnesses, Mormons, Theosophists, etc)

Catholicism and derivatives (Anglican, Episcopal) state that there is no conflict between science, including evolutionary theory, and faith. Therefore at least 1.2 billion of the 2.1 billion worldwide Christians are not ‘creationists’.

It also seems likely that the Independents (as defined in the above paper) are unlikely to hold strong literalist views.

This leaves us with Protestants, some Marginals, and an unknown number of Orthodox. Taking them at 100% ‘creationist’ totals 628 million, or 30% of worldwide Christianity.

But this http://www.thearda.com/quickStats/qs_23_p.asp suggests that for American Protestants, when asked in a general social survey, at least 30% thought that evolution is either “definitely true” or “probably true”.

A number of the citations upthread state that Protestants outside the USA have much lower adherence to ‘creationist’ views, but no data (that I could find or extract) proves this. But it seems reasonable to assign at least the same breakdown of belief as for the USA subset of Protestants. So let us remove 30% of the 375 million Protestants from the ‘creationist’ camp, leaving 263 million.

Now, again assuming 100% ‘creationist’ views although this is hardly likely to be true, we are left with 263 million Protestants, 219 million Orthodox, and 34 million Marginals, total 516 million or no more than 25% of worldwide Christians.

I fully admit that these figures are based upon a number of suppositions, and the level of uncertainty is high. And I recognize that we are glossing over differences between ‘young earth’, ‘old earth’, ‘theistic’, ‘naturalistic’, and a host of other nuances. However, I believe that sufficient actual data is present to affirm the OP.

(I apologize for the links-- I seem to have lost the ability to insert a word [like linky] instead of a complete URL. Mods are welcome to fix, and anyone can backchannel me to fight my ignorance for inserting future links.)

[scumbat]

Dear CannyDan;
Which biblical story of creation are you refereing to? Genesis 1 or 2?

I first discovered this when I studied Old Testament fir the first time. The homework question was

“Read creations stories in Genesis 1 & 2 and comment on differences”

Next week, I asked the lecturer about the question, asking “shouldn’t that be singular?”

“No” she said. “Did you read them?” she asked. Somewhat embarrassed, I had to admit that I didn’t. Lesson 1: never assume the Bible says what you think, just because of popular perception.

The story in Genesis 1 dates from about 500 BC. It has the six-day creation story; it is very ordered and neat. In it, God begins with nothing, and the creation culminates in the creation of humans.

The Genesis 2 story (verses 3 onward) dates much earlier. In this story, God creates the man first, the and then creates everything around him, including the woman.

Many fundamentalists have no inkling of these differences, and have a ‘porridge mix’ concept of the two stories.

As far as stats go, I can’t tell.