Poll: More Americans Believe in Devil than Darwin

By Ethan Cole, Christian Post Reporter Monday, December 03, 2007

More Americans believe in a literal hell and the devil than in Darwin's theory of evolution, a new poll found.

Over half of Americans, 62 percent, believe in hell and the devil compared to only 42 percent of those surveyed who said they believe in Darwin's theory, according to the findings of the recently released Harris poll.

The poll of 2,455 U.S. adults, taken Nov. 7-13, found that 82 percent of respondents believe in God, according to Reuters. It further showed that 79 percent believe in miracles, 75 percent in heaven, and 72 percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ is God or the Son of God.

Yet Christians are far from a homogenous group and a break-up of respondents based on Christian traditions shows discrepancies in their level of belief.

Born-again Christians, for example, are more likely to believe in miracles (95 percent) as compared to Catholics (87 percent) and Protestants (89 percent), according to the poll.

On the other hand, only 16 percent of born-again Christians believe in Darwin's theory of evolution compared to 43 percent of Catholics and 30 percent of Protestants.

Interestingly, more born-again Christians – a term usually referring to evangelical Protestants – believe in witches (37 percent) than mainline Protestants or Catholics, both at 32 percent, according to Reuters.

The poll results, which were released last Thursday, show the high level of religiosity in the United States. It also helps explain the strong effort to teach the "intelligent design" theory in U.S. public schools alongside evolution. Intelligent design contends that life is too complex to have evolved by chance, but rather requires an intelligent being to design it.