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Survey: U.S. Protestant Pastors Reject Evolution, Split on Earth’s Age

By editorsub1 on January 12, 2012 1:46 am in US News / 5 comments

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America’s Protestant pastors overwhelmingly reject the theory of evolution and are evenly split on whether the earth is 6,000 years old, according to a survey released Monday by the Southern Baptist Convention.

When asked if “God used evolution to create people,” 73% of pastors disagreed – 64% said they strongly disagreed – compared to 12% who said they agree.

Asked whether the earth is approximately 6,000 years old, 46% agreed, compared to 43% who disagreed.

A movement called Young Earth creationism promotes the 6,000-year-old figure, arguing that it is rooted in the Bible. Scientists say the earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

The Southern Baptist Convention survey, which queried 1,000 American Protestant pastors, also found that 74% believe the biblical Adam and Eve were literal people.

“Recently discussions have pointed to doubts about a literal Adam and Eve, the age of the earth and other origin issues,” said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, a division of the Southern Baptist Convention, in a report on LifeWay’s site. “But Protestant pastors are overwhelmingly Creationists and believe in a literal Adam and Eve.”

The phone survey was conducted in May 2011, sampling ministers from randomly selected Protestant churches. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent, LifeWay said.

A 2010 Gallup poll found that 40% of Americans believe God created humans in their present form, versus 54% who said humans developed over millions of years.

SOURCE

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5 Comments

Mary says:

January 12, 2012 at 11:21 pm

So much for this psychobabble. This is a matter of faith, is’t it? Let’s quit picking thing apart and hang in there. We can only pray for those whose penchant is to pick thing apart. Doing less can’t be called anything but two-faced, non-Christian behavior. That’s not to say we don’t defend our faith, but that we do God’s bidding by praying for those bent on pursuing their skepticizm

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mark says:

January 12, 2012 at 8:44 pm

Did the survey also ask the protestant pastors whether they also believed the world is flat, with a great “dome” in the sky with doors or windows through which the rain falls? (as described in Gen 1:6-7; and Gen 7:11-12 and 8:2 if you want to take the ancient cosmogony literally)

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Ron Bohr says:

January 12, 2012 at 4:34 pm

This is an outrageous insult to mainline Christians. Only the (admittedly numerous) young earth fundamentalists and evangelicals hold to this illogical set of beliefs, out of fear of social change and lack of understanding of the gospel.
They speak only for a large extremist fringe, not for progressive Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, or members of various peace churches (Mennonite, Nazarene, Friends, etc.)
Don’t give these uninformed extremists more print than they deserve.

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Anonymous says:

January 12, 2012 at 3:19 pm

I wonder if the 30,000 year old mummy scientists found in South America knew that it was impossible for him to have been here.

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charles bolser says:

January 12, 2012 at 2:28 pm

When we are unable to fathom metaphore or symbolic language, then we are forced into literalism – and the bible becomes a scientefic treatise – not a spiritual guide speaking about the human journey with God.

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