Religious Views on Evolution

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posted by The BioLogos Foundation | 8:32am Wednesday June 3, 2009

While many talk about a general conflict between religion and evolution, the truth is that the acceptance of the theory varies greatly among religions and even denominations. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”, published last year, offers a glimpse into how religion and evolution intersect for different religions in America.

According to their survey, those of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish faiths were the most likely to accept evolution as the best explanation of human origins. Among Christians, Catholics were slightly more likely than mainline Protestants and much more likely than evangelicals to accept evolution. Evangelical Protestants, whom Francis has said are the main audience of The BioLogos Foundation, were half as likely as the general U.S. population to support evolution as the explanation for human life.

The full data of the survey can be found on the Pew Forum’s website. They also offer a more in-depth look at responses to evolution from 13 religious different groups.

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Comments read comments(2)

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Kyle

posted June 3, 2009 at 12:30 pm

It’s interesting that evangelical Protestants are in the same clump of bars as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses–two groups many/most evangelicals would say have cultlike belief systems.
Not sure what it means specifically. It’s just interesting that evangelicals are most in agreement on this question with two groups whose overall belief systems they would be quite dismissive of.

Bruce Goodman

posted June 8, 2009 at 4:16 pm

I don’t like the wording of the question so would probably answer it no even though I think evolution is the best explanation for the origin of species in general. It doesn’t explain the origin of life per se, however. How about the origin of human life? Humans have things unique about them that other creatures don’t and I don’t believe evolution is the best explanation for what makes us unique beings.