Pew Research Poll: Faithful Christians Still Don’t Believe in Evolution
A new Pew Research Poll shows that “Christians” lag behind the rest of the world in believing that humans and animals evolved over millions of years, often showing as much as 35% disparity. While that is good news on the face of it, the number of professing Christians that do believe in it is far higher than it ought to be.
Like most polls from Pew or Barna, they ought to be taken with a ‘Lot’s wife’ worth of salt. One methodological point is that the graph doesn’t distinguish between the number of “Christians who say religion is very important to them” and “Christians who don’t”
Given that there is no such thing as a believer who says religion is not important to them, it’s a misnomer. If they wanted to know the percentage of Christians who believe in evolution, this would not be a self-identifying descriptor, but rather would only include those who say the Bible is the inspired, infallible, inerrant, sufficient word of God.
And then the number would drop down to < 1 %.
Though Tim Keller and his ilk at BioLogos want you to believe that the earth is billions of years old and humans or human-like-humans have been evolving for millions of years, this is not Christian orthodoxy.
Rather, God created the universe ex-nihilo and the book of Genesis is to be taken literally, including talking serpents, Adam and Eve, 7-literal day creation, naming the animals, angel guarding Eden, people living to be nearly 1000 years old, the flood, Nephilim, etc. All of it.
Macroevolution for animals? No. Microevolution for the same? Sure. Human evolution? Heck no.
According to the survey:
“[there is] broad acceptance of evolution across these publics. A median of 74% say humans and other living things have evolved, while a median of just 21% think humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.
The 21% echoes a Biologos poll commissioned in 2013 that shows just 19% of Christian pastors believe the creation story ‘Answers-in-Genesis style.’
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Spain is a country with virtually no Protestants. You’re either a Catholic or an atheist there. Evangelicals are mostly gypsies or Latin American immigrants.
If you or your family or church would like more creationist resources, go to Creation Ministries International at creation dot com. They are a great organization! Check out their website- they have thousands of articles covering all sorts of creation/evolution topics.
I guess I am in that <1%. I have no problem saying the Bible is the inspired, infallible, inerrant, sufficient word of God, because it absolutely is. Following that, Jesus Christ is Lord, the only Lord over all, the only Savior, the only way to salvation and to the Father and He is God. He is my Passover Lamb. I would like to see a poll on how many “Christians” even know what a Passover Lamb is and what it really means. As for Evolution, it can easily be shown, separately from the Biblical account, that it is statistically impossible and totally illogical. I guess I am just tired and disgusted with how so badly real Christianity and the real Gospel have been mangled beyond recognition by so many that say they are Christians but are not. They will put on their Yoga pants and chase after some Swami or self appointed Guru, read books on how to get the latest “Holy Spirit experience,” how to “hear from God,” or the “12 steps to Nirvana,” or how cool Oprah is, or whatever, but read the Bible, the only book that contains the truth…oh, no, “we won’t do that, but yes, we are Christians.” It is very sad.
I’m with you on how biblically illiterate evangelicals, all Christians in fact, really can be. One of the biggest lies in the evangelical church is that “we are Bible people.”
A couple of ironic things:
Several years ago I took to reading conservative, faithful commentaries NAC, NIVAC, others), and I still learn so much more from them than I’ve ever learned in church. To this day my reaction to what I read is often annoyance or even anger, “why didn’t I know this already?” All the symbolism, all the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, all the background context, so many things. Why didn’t I *already know* about how often Jesus quotes the Psalms or Deuteronomy? Why don’t I *already know* where to find the messianic prophecies? Why didn’t I *already know* about the Passover lamb and the levitical sacrifices? How can evangelicals and Baptists sit in decades of Sunday school classes and struggle to recite a single verse that confirms substitutionary atonement? Trinitarian theology? Any type of judgement for sexual immorality? Sunday school has become worthless and small group Bible studies even worse.
Also, I spent a few years as an adult attending a mainline liturgical church, one of the ones evangelicals rail about as being a false church. I actually learned a lot from the creeds and liturgy. There’s a certain chant that is sung during the Eucharistic service that quotes from 1Cor 5:7-8, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast, hallelujah.” (If I recall correctly Its part of the liturgical service called the Fraction.) I was sort of perplexed at first and studied up. After a couple of decades of being raised in a Baptist church, I learned about Christ as the fulfillment of the Passover at a mainline church. How’s that for irony?
Evolution is a lie. Period.