In a finding likely to intensify the debate over what to teach students about the origins of life, a poll released Tuesday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.
The poll found that 42 percent of respondents hold strict creationist views, agreeing that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”
In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans evolved over time; but of those, 18 percent said evolution was “guided by a supreme being,” and 26 percent said evolution occurred through natural selection.
In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.
The survey was conducted July 7-17 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The questions about evolution were asked of 2,000 people, and the margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Green called it a reflection of “American pragmatism.”
“It’s like they’re saying, ‘Some people see it this way, some see it that way, so just teach it all and let the kids figure it out.’ It seems like a nice compromise, but it infuriates both the creationists and the scientists,” said Green, who is a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio.
Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, said the findings were not surprising because “Americans react very positively to the fairness or equal-time kind of argument.” Creationists’ science “is dismal,” Scott said. “but they do have American culture on their side.”
Luis E. Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said, “I think this is a continuation of the Republican Party’s very successful use of the values issue in the 2004 election, and the Democrats not being able up until now to answer that successfully. Some of the more visible leaders, such as Howard Dean and others, have reinforced that image of a secular party.”