The Creation/Evolution Debate Continues

After my debate with Bill Nye “the Science Guy” in February, it was evident that the debate over origins is alive and well in our Western culture. Well, that has been confirmed with a new poll from Gallup.

According to The Huffington Post, Gallup found that “42% of Americans hold the creationist belief that God created humanity as it currently exists a mere 10,000 years ago.” That’s not an insignificant number. Now, we at Answers in Genesis would teach that God created the universe and everything in it around 6,000 years ago, based on the genealogies in Scripture. For a more in-depth explanation, read Bodie Hodge’s article, “How old is the earth?”

But even so, close to half of Americans believe that humans were specially created by God within the last 10,000 years. That’s far less than the long ages that evolutionists claim . . . and far different from the evolutionary view that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors. Evolutionists try to claim that this is settled “‘science,” that it’s all proven. But despite the intense evolutionary indoctrination through the public education system, secular museums, and much of the media (e.g., the Cosmos TV series running for the past twelve weeks—see one of our episode reviews, The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth), a large percentage of the population obviously still reject that humans evolved.

There is a sad trend, however, with the current  generation.  Another interesting result of Gallup’s poll revealed that a belief in some form of creationism severely drops off with college graduates. Now, I would submit that this has to do with the indoctrination into evolution that goes on in most secular colleges. What’s more, I believe that it’s also indicative of the compromise in many Christian colleges/universities on Genesis chapters 1–11. But the doubts about God’s Word in Genesis actually begin earlier than college.  The Gallup poll also showed an increase (even though the numbers are relatively small) in the percentage of those who reject God altogether.

In 2009, AiG contracted with America’s Research Group to identify why the church was losing two-thirds of its young people by the time they reached college age (and few really return). And we found that students begin having doubts about the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, especially in Genesis 1–11, before college—in middle and high school. Attending a compromising Christian university only serves to solidify those doubts. The results of all this research were published in my co-authored books Already Gone and Already Compromised.

But, according to the Gallup poll, many people seem to realize there are problems with evolutionary ideas. Our goal at Answers in Genesis, in addition to wanting to see people converted to be born-again believers, is to equip people to think critically about the assumptions underlying evolution and millions of years. We want them to be able to identify those problems and give biblical and scientific answers to them. That’s what I did during my debate with Bill Nye, and this Gallup poll reveals that our work is far from finished.

At the same time, I believe this poll shows that there is a considerable creationist influence in this nation.  Personally I believe that ministries like AiG and the Creation Museum have played (and continue to play) a significant part in this influence.  Tens of millions of people this year will access the AiG website;  well over 2 million people (including hundreds of thousands of kids) have visited the Creation Museum;  millions of pieces of  biblical creationist literature have been distributed by AiG throughout the culture;  thousands of presentations by AiG speakers have been given in churches, colleges, conferences, etc.

If you’re looking for a college that stands on the authority of God’s Word from the very first verse, I encourage you to view our list of colleges and universities whose presidents have affirmed in writing the AiG Statement of Faith at CreationColleges.org. You may also want to bring your students to AiG’s College Expo in November. And I urge you to take advantage of the numerous resources available on our website at AnswersInGenesis.org.

Also, I encourage you to bring your family and friends to the Creation Museum—and this year kids 12 and under are free.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

This blog was written with the assistance of Steve Golden.