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5 facts about evolution and religion

David Masci ("Pew Research Center," October 30, 2014)


Are faith and belief in evolution necessarily at odds? According to Pope Francis, the answer is
no. Indeed, the pope recently reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Churchs view that evolution in
nature is not inconsistent with church teaching on creation, pushing the debate on human
origins back into the news.
Although most U.S. Catholics accept the idea of evolution in some form, a substantial percentage
of American adults reject the scientific explanation for the origins of human life, and a number
of religious groups in the U.S. maintain that Charles Darwins theory of evolution through
natural selection is not correct because it conflicts with their views of creation.
Here are five facts about evolution and faith:
1 The Roman Catholic Church has long accepted or at least not objected to evolutionary
theory. Pope Francis is not the first pontiff to publicly affirm that evolution is compatible with
church teachings. In 1950, in the encyclical Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII said that Catholic
teachings on creation could coexist with evolutionary theory. Pope John Paul II went a bit further
in 1996, calling evolution more than a hypothesis.
2 A minority of Americans fully accept the scientific explanation for the origins of human life.
According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, 60% of Americans say humans have evolved
over time, but only about half of that group (32% of U.S. adults overall) believes that humans
and other living things evolved solely due to natural processes, the explanation accepted by the
vast majority of scientists. About a quarter of U.S. adults (24%) say that humans and other life
evolved, but that this evolution was guided by a supreme being. The same survey found that a
third of Americans (33%) reject evolution entirely, saying humans and other living things have
existed in their present form since the beginning of time.
3 Of all the major religious groups in the U.S., white evangelical Protestants are the most likely
to reject evolution. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of white evangelicals say that humans and other
living things have always existed in their present form, while roughly one-in-ten white
evangelicals (8%) say that humans evolved through natural processes. On the other end of the
spectrum are the unaffiliated, a majority of whom (57%) said they believe that life evolved
through natural processes.
The rejection of evolution by most evangelicals is largely mirrored by their churches, such as the
Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which explicitly reject
evolutionary theory as being in conflict with what they see as biblical truth.
4 About a quarter of white American Catholics (26%) say that they do not believe in evolution of
any kind, despite the churchs acceptance of it. The share of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. who
reject evolution and say that humans have always existed in their present form is even higher
(31%).

5 A series of court decisions prohibit the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in public
schools. In spite of efforts in many American states and localities to ban the teaching of
evolution in public schools or to teach alternatives to evolution, courts in recent decades have
consistently rejected public school curricula that veer away from evolutionary theory. In
Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law
requiring public school students to learn both evolution and creation science violated the U.S.
Constitutions prohibition on the establishment of religion.

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