Four out of five Britons repudiate creationism
Ian Sample, Science correspondent
The Guardian (United Kingdom), p. 10.
March 2, 2009
The east of England may be the most godless region of the UK, according to a “belief map” published by a theology think tank today. Almost half of adults there believe the theory of evolution makes God obsolete, and more than 80% disagree with creationism and intelligent design, which propose that humans were created by God in the past 10,000 years, and that life owes its complexity to divine intervention.
The map was drawn up by the think tank Theos following a survey of 2,060 people across the country who were chosen to be representative of the adult population.
The survey, which was conducted to mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, found that nearly half of the British adult population could not name the country’s greatest naturalist as the author of On the Origin of Species, the 1859 book that introduced evolution through natural selection to a sceptical Victorian society.
