The minor wording changes appear to have resulted in a slight increase in the percentage of Americans choosing the literal biblical alternative rather than the "evolution with God's help" alternative. The main objective of the current analysis is to look at the relationship between several characteristics of the population and belief in biblical creationism as measured by this question.
Because Gallup has asked this question so many times, the large number of interviews enables us to look with more confidence at smaller subgroups. For the purposes of this analysis, we aggregated the results from the September survey with the November and the February surveys in order to provide a sample size of more than 3, interviews.
That leaves about half of Americans who agree that humans developed or evolved, either with or without God's help in the process. It is possible to use complex statistical analysis to disentangle the relationship between measures of the characteristics of the population and responses to this question. The current analysis, however, will take a more straightforward look at relationships between the background variables of interest and belief in biblical creationism by examining simple crosstabular relationships.
The influence of education on beliefs about the origin of humans is a good place to start. The theory of evolution is the accepted scientific approach to understanding the origin of humans, so one would expect that Americans with the highest levels of formal education would be the most likely to believe in evolution, and the least likely to believe that God created humans "as is.
The relationship is linear. One can assume that religious Americans would be more likely to believe in the biblical story of creation than would those who are less religious. A measure of religiosity is required to test this hypothesis. Research suggests that using a measure of church attendance is a simple, yet effective way to estimate an individual's religiosity: "How often do you attend church or synagogue -- at least once a week, almost every week, about once a month, seldom, or never?
There is, as expected, a strong relationship between this measure of religiosity and belief that God created humans. The difference between the two groups of church attenders is 30 percentage points. Twice as many Americans who attend church weekly or almost every week believe the biblical explanation as those who are less frequent church attenders. Lakoff and M.
Johnson and G. See also S. Nicholson, Pentateuch , pp. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Sign In or Create an Account. Sign In.
Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation. Volume Article Contents Abstract. C urrent I nterpretation. I mage and P arenthood in G en. A ncient N ear E astern P arallels. G od as C reator and P arent. G od as P arent. Crouch C. Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge clc65 cam. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Cite Cite C.
Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. For commercial re-use, please contact journals. Issue Section:. Download all slides. Nevertheless, the gap between modern humans and other species is real. We should be cautious, though, in defining the image of God as our unique human cognitive abilities.
It is possible that the gap could have been filled by other species that are now extinct. We now know of many extinct hominin species, some of which even interbred with anatomically modern humans.
Would the cognitive abilities of these species reveal only a difference only in degree? Some scientists think that is the case, 5 and if so, that would raise a challenge to understanding the image of God as our unique cognitive abilities. Another challenge for this interpretation of the image of God is the status of people with mental disabilities. Are they not showing his true likeness?
The Christian answer to these questions is a resounding no! The Bible repeatedly teaches that God values all people, particularly those who are rejected by society or unable to care for themselves. In fact, Genesis points to image bearing as the reason that all human life is valuable. This is a major motivator for Christians who seek to protect the unborn, the poor, and the aged.
This challenge may be addressed in part by recognizing that the image of God was bestowed in Genesis 1 on humanity as a whole—it may not be a property of individuals per se but of the whole human family. These cautions notwithstanding, the idea that God may have bestowed his image on humanity in the fullness of time—at some point during evolutionary history when humans had sufficient cognitive capacities—is consistent with the traditional theological view of the image of God as relating in some way to our cognitive capacities.
Another common view is that the image of God refers to our capacity for a relationship with God. Of all visible creatures only man is able to know and love his creator. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity. Being in the image of God, the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons.
And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead. John Calvin and other Reformers 6 wrote of the image of God as the original righteousness of humans before the Fall. In his Commentary on Genesis , Calvin writes,. Since the image of God had been destroyed in us by the fall, we may judge from its restoration what it originally had been.
Paul says that we are transformed into the image of God by the gospel. And, according to him, spiritual regeneration is nothing else than the restoration of the same image. Neuroscientists have looked for evidence of such things as selfless behavior or the ability to perceive the transcendent.
But science is simply not capable of fully testing such spiritual realities; the evidence that scientists do find is open to many interpretations.
In the ancient cultures of Egypt and Canaan, people made images of their gods from metal and wood and set them up in local temples to worship. God has named us as his living images. In Genesis 4 and 5 we already have towns, agriculture, metallurgy and music. These considerations would make pushing Adam back to , B.
This is why many attempts to reconcile an exegesis of Genesis with reasonably well-founded information from history, linguistics, culture, anthropology, paleontology, archaeology, geology, physics and astronomy has been both difficult and controversial for students of the Bible. Perhaps presently available information from all sources is inadequate to harmonize Genesis and anthropology at this time.
At the same time, it seems plausible that the appearance of homo-Sapiens man was contemporary with the end of the ice age, the saber-toothed tiger and the giant mammoth.
One might just as well also ask if all species of dinosaurs were brought on board, instead of going extinct about 65 million years ago. The position that all races of homo Sapiens that ever lived on earth were derived from Noah has a problem. If there is good evidence for Indians being in America sometime between 8, and 13, B.
Ramm, Also, in order to include Negroid and mongoloid races as descendents of Noah would require a great deal of stretching of the Genesis genealogies. Early chapters of Genesis seem to involve primarily Caucasoid races.
These people seem to have migrated from Shinar in Mesopotamia to produce the Semetic family of nations including the Hebrews. Ramm, Races among homo Sapiens would most likely have developed in a fashion similar to the way varieties develop within any other species of animals.
Isolation of a common stock can eventually lead to a well-defined variety. Is there anything unreasonable about the assumption that what we know about genetics, combined with separation or selection over time, could have produced all human races that presently exist in the world?
Committed believers, who honestly seek Biblical truth, do, in fact embrace or argue in favor of differing interpretations of certain discrete portions of Scripture.
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