I know that polls can be skewed and are often not reflective of reality, but they can not be dismissed altogether. Here are a couple more which I found interesting:
"Belief in creation science seems to be largely a U.S. phenomenon. A British survey of 103 Roman Catholic priests, Anglican bishops and Protestant ministers/pastors showed that:
97% do not believe the world was created in six days."
News item in ReligionToday for 1999-DEC-29. They quoted the Conservative News Service.
What is interesting here is that the UK and Australia are second behind the US in the growth of YEC'ism. Obviously, there is still are large gap between the US phenomenon and its impact on the UK.
Another:
In 1999-NOV, Focus on the Family, a U.S. Fundamentalist Christian agency, concluded a poll of their web site visitors, presumably also Fundamentalist Christians, concerning their beliefs about creation and evolution. Results were that 43% believed that the earth was only thousands of years old. A larger number, 46%, said they did not know when the earth was created. Only 10% specifically believed it was billions of years old.
Basically, then, a MINORITY of conservative, even fundamentalist, Christians believe that the YEC position of a six to twelve thousand year old earth is necessarily correct. While the group believing specifically that the earth is billions of years old is an even smaller minority among conservative Christians, there is hardly a consensus in favor of a young earth.
The interesting thing is what that 46% is thinking. By not flatly accepting a young earth as the only possibility, they are basically rejecting the YEC argument that a belief in anything but a young earth is a disbelief in the Bible. They won't commit themselves to either a young earth (literal reading) or an old earth, but the fact that they are willing to consider either as a possibility is very significant. And this is as conservative a group as you can find.
"Belief in creation science seems to be largely a U.S. phenomenon. A British survey of 103 Roman Catholic priests, Anglican bishops and Protestant ministers/pastors showed that:
97% do not believe the world was created in six days."
News item in ReligionToday for 1999-DEC-29. They quoted the Conservative News Service.
What is interesting here is that the UK and Australia are second behind the US in the growth of YEC'ism. Obviously, there is still are large gap between the US phenomenon and its impact on the UK.
Another:
In 1999-NOV, Focus on the Family, a U.S. Fundamentalist Christian agency, concluded a poll of their web site visitors, presumably also Fundamentalist Christians, concerning their beliefs about creation and evolution. Results were that 43% believed that the earth was only thousands of years old. A larger number, 46%, said they did not know when the earth was created. Only 10% specifically believed it was billions of years old.
Basically, then, a MINORITY of conservative, even fundamentalist, Christians believe that the YEC position of a six to twelve thousand year old earth is necessarily correct. While the group believing specifically that the earth is billions of years old is an even smaller minority among conservative Christians, there is hardly a consensus in favor of a young earth.
The interesting thing is what that 46% is thinking. By not flatly accepting a young earth as the only possibility, they are basically rejecting the YEC argument that a belief in anything but a young earth is a disbelief in the Bible. They won't commit themselves to either a young earth (literal reading) or an old earth, but the fact that they are willing to consider either as a possibility is very significant. And this is as conservative a group as you can find.
