Evolution Poll

• 4% of Americans had no opinion (down from 9% in 1982)
• 47% believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so
• 49% believe that human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life.

Of that latter 49%, four fifths (40% of total) believe that God guided the process, and one fifth (9% of total) believe that God had no part in the process. Thus, 87% believe that a supreme being created humans either directly or indirectly.

One interpretation of the Gallup poll is that (to the nearest 5%):

• 45% of Americans believe in creationism and reject evolution completely.
• 40% of Americans believe in God-guided evolution but reject the "theory of evolution" advocated by neo-Darwinists.
• 10% of Americans believe in the naturalistic theory of evolution, i.e., neo-Darwinism
• 5% are undecided

However, the poll was specifically about the teaching of evolution of the public schools, not about one's general beliefs, so this interpretation may not be accurate.

The United Nations "Planet Project" polled people over the Internet to get worldwide views, though those are considerably less reliable than phone polls, especially because people who cannot afford Internet access may have different beliefs from those who can. On average about 18% of Europeans polled believed that man was created divinely by God (although this does not necessarily exclude evolution of the rest of nature) and the remaining 82% believed that humans descended from other species. This result is consistent with the fact that the two largest Christian denominations in Europe are the Roman Catholic church which accepts a form of evolution, and the Lutheran church which has no official position but does not generally oppose it in practice.

See: Creationism, Evolution, Theory of evolution, Educational issues