lpetrich
Contributor
Research Shows a Rise in the Public Acceptance of Evolution Over the Last Decade by Hemant Mehta
Descent with modification, of course.
What they asked about:
Acceptance and rejection were close over 1985 - 2006, going from near 45% to near 40% over that time. "Don't know" increased from 7% in 1985 to 22% in 2006. Then by 2016, acceptance increased to about 50%, rejection decreased to about 35%, and "don't know" decreased to 10%. They have stayed approximately constant to 2020, the most recent date.
I suspect that this is related to the rise of the "Nones" or unaffiliated. They would have much less reason to believe in theological creationism, and since the main alternative in our society is evolution, they'd accept that.
Descent with modification, of course.
40% of Americans Believe in CreationismThe most recent Gallup poll on the matter, from 2019, found something a little more optimistic. Only 22% of Americans correctly said that humans developed over millions of years with God playing no role in the process. But another 33% of Americans agreed on the "developed over millions of years" bit; they just felt God guided the process. Still, that's 55% of Americans who accepted evolution.
That's a very low rate of acceptance of reality. But... yay for being a majority?
What they asked about:
- Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process;
- Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process;
- God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so
Public acceptance of evolution in the United States, 1985–2020 - Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott, Mark S. Ackerman, Belén Laspra, Glenn Branch, Carmelo Polino, Jordan S. Huffaker, 2021We can now add one more useful piece of data to this collection. According to a new paper published in the journal Public Understanding of Science, researchers looked at national surveys collected over the past 35 years to see what the acceptance of evolution looked like over that time. What they found was that the acceptance of evolution "increased substantially in the last decade."
The surveys they used asked the same question over that entire period of time: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." (They didn't ask about God's role.) They found that, over the past decade, the percentage of Americans who agreed with that sentence rose from 40% to 54%.
Acceptance and rejection were close over 1985 - 2006, going from near 45% to near 40% over that time. "Don't know" increased from 7% in 1985 to 22% in 2006. Then by 2016, acceptance increased to about 50%, rejection decreased to about 35%, and "don't know" decreased to 10%. They have stayed approximately constant to 2020, the most recent date.
I suspect that this is related to the rise of the "Nones" or unaffiliated. They would have much less reason to believe in theological creationism, and since the main alternative in our society is evolution, they'd accept that.