A Survey of Religious Belief and Knowledge at a University in Oklahoma

I teach many general biology classes, for students in all different majors, as well as biology students in my botany and evolution classes, at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. For years, I have known that my students had religious beliefs that covered the whole range from agnosticism to fundamentalist Christianity, and scientific perceptions ranging from evolution-only to young-earth-creationism. Since we are in the middle of the Bible Belt, I assumed most of them were creationists. But I never asked them.

Until now.

A couple of weeks ago I administered a survey (with institutional approval) of religious knowledge and beliefs. The survey was voluntary and anonymous. The religion under consideration was Christianity, because it is the most common religion in rural Oklahoma. I wanted to know how many of the students accepted evolutionary science and how many believed the Bible to be a, or the, holy book. And if they did believe the Bible to be holy, just how much did they know about it? Most of the questions I asked had something to do with biology: the age of the Earth and Noah’s flood (evolution), Old Testament dietary laws (nutrition), the Sabbath of the Fields (ecology), slavery (the genetics of race relations), and violent miscarriage (relating to the question of when human life begins). I will now report the results from the 49 respondents in my general biology classes.

The first thing that I discovered is that student beliefs were more evenly spread than I had anticipated; they were not overwhelmingly young-earth creationist.

Belief General Biology Fall 2014	Number	Percent	Belief in literal six-day creation	Belief that Noah’s Flood covered the whole Earth
Evolution produced the diversity of life.	6	12%	0%	0%
God allowed or used evolution to produce the diversity of life.	14	29%	44%	67%
God supernaturally created diversity over a long period of time.	13	27%	60%	100%
God supernaturally created diversity over a short and recent period of time.	10	20%	100%	89%
Declined to state	6	12%	50%	100%

There were 20 students of 49 who accepted some form of evolution, and 23 who did not. As it turns out, the “declined to state” category answered most questions in a creationist fashion, so it might be safest to assume 20 students of 49 (41%) being open to evolution in some form, and 29 students of 49 (59%) rejecting evolution. Belief in a literal six days of creation and a Flood that covered the whole Earth were higher in the creationist categories, but, perhaps surprisingly, not completely pegged to 100%; Noah’s Flood seemed more popular than the six-day creation.

Seventy-nine percent of the respondents who said that God allowed evolution to occur believed that the Bible was a or the holy book; in the creationist and declined-to-state categories it was 100%. The following information is based only on the students who identified the Bible as holy.

Of these students, only 15 percent had actually read the Bible. The others had read parts of it, or relied on their preachers to quote passages to them. That is, 85 percent of the people of faith relied on their preachers to edit the Bible for them: to either conveniently ignore certain passages, or to actually give them misinformation about what the Bible said.

General Topic General Biology Fall 2014	Specific belief	Percentage answering “yes”
Evolution, Earth history	Genesis 1 contains the account of Adam and Eve.	65%
	God raised up new mountains after the Flood.	80%
	God created new life forms after the Flood.	24%
	God put the fossils in order during the Flood.	21%
Health and diet	The Law of Moses says eating shellfish is an abomination.	34%
Ecology	The world will end soon.	62%
	The Law of Moses says that agricultural land should lie fallow (uncultivated) every seventh year.	79%
Social and racial	The Law of Moses says debts should be forgiven every fifty years and land should go back to its original owners.	26%
	Children born into slavery remained slaves even if their parents were freed.	25%
	Israelites could own other Israelites as slaves.	40%
	The Law of Moses says, “The slave is his money.”	27%
	Injuring a slave, who dies later, is not a punishable offense.	50%
	The Law of Moses says that there should be no resident aliens in Israel.	42%
Life before birth	The Law of Moses considers that injuring a woman so as to cause a miscarriage is manslaughter or murder.	59%

First, consider the beliefs about evolution and Earth history. Among the difficulties of creationist explanations are: first, there are two creation accounts in Genesis, not just one; second, why do you have fossil deposits high up in mountains; third, how could animal genetic diversity come from just two of each kind in the ark; fourth, why do the fossils show an evolutionary order. These are things that creationist pastors may wish that people would not ask. How convenient it would be if churchgoers would ignore the differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, or to think that God solved these problems by putting the fossils in order, raising up mountains, and creating new genetic diversity. Large percentages of believers the respondents did in fact believe these things, even though they are not in the Bible. They just made these things up. No wonder so few religious students notice that the facts of science contradict a literalistic view of the Bible; they do not know what a literalistic view of the Bible is.

Next, consider beliefs about Old Testament dietary laws. Only 34 percent knew that Leviticus 11 condemns eating shellfish as an abomination. It is very common for conservative preachers to quote the Old Testament to say that homosexuality is an abomination. But they almost never say that the Old Testament uses the same word to refer to eating shrimp.

Perhaps the most disturbing finding is that 62 percent of the respondents believed that the world is going to end soon. This one result is enough to make me almost stop worrying about evolution education and focus on environmental education. If you believe that the world is going to end soon, then at least subconsciously you are going to be unconvinced that it is important to prevent global warming or to protect endangered species or to recycle or to conserve energy or anything else. Go ahead and make a mess of the world, since God is going to destroy it very soon anyway. Of course, politicians who say to not worry about the Earth will NOT say to not worry about terrorists or deficit spending. It’s just the Earth you can ignore.

Most of the respondents (79 percent) knew about what is popularly called the Sabbath of the Fields, which is a primitive form of soil conservation commanded in the Book of Exodus. Most of them know that the Law of Moses addresses stewardship and conservation of the land. But only 26 percent knew about the year of jubilee, in which debts are forgiven and land goes back to its original owners every fifty years. Such a law would be the death-knell of capitalism. It sounds like socialism, and that is probably why preachers almost never talk about it.

Most respondents had a very unclear idea about what the Old Testament said about slavery. They thought that Biblical slavery was benign and more closely resembled an employer-employee relationship than actual ownership of a person. But the Old Testament clearly indicates that a child slave remains a slave even if the parent is given freedom and that it says “the slave is his money” (Exodus 21:21). If an owner kills a slave outright, it is manslaughter, but if the owner injures a slave and he or she dies a few days later, it is not a punishable offense, according to the Law of Moses. Most Bible believers appear to be unaware of this.

The Law of Moses says that resident aliens in the land of Israel should receive the same rights as the Israelites; one law for both. Almost half of the respondents were unaware of this. When conservative preachers rail against “illegal aliens,” they conveniently ignore this part of the Bible.

Finally, you hear conservative preachers all the time saying that, according to the Bible, abortion is murder. Therefore, if someone injures a woman so that she has a miscarriage, then the death of the fetus constitutes at least manslaughter. But the Law of Moses does not say this. Exodus 21 says, "And if men strive together, and hurt a pregnant woman, so that her child comes out, and yet no harm follows; the one who hit her shall surely be fined, according as the woman's husband shall impose on him; and he shall pay a fine as the judges determine. But if any harm follows, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth." It is unclear whether “harm” refers to the fetus or to the mother. While his passage does not actually sanction abortion, it does possibly indicate that the death of the fetus is not manslaughter. Over half of the respondents are unaware of this.

The conclusion I take away from this is that people who are most strongly convinced that the Bible has religious authority over science and daily life are unaware of what the bible actually says about these matters. This undoubtedly comes from people getting their Bible knowledge from preachers who twist what the Bible actually says and then assume (correctly) that their followers will not bother to look at the Bible themselves.

I also gave this survey to my evolution class (consisting mostly of upper division biological science majors). I only had fourteen respondents, which is not enough of a sample size to justify closer analysis except for these overall results. First, the most common belief in this class was theistic evolution (43 percent of respondents). The next most common belief was that evolution produced diversity (29 percent). Only three of the students (21 percent) were young-earth creationists, and only one was an old-earth creationist. This course is an elective, which most creationist students avoid. Second, acceptance of evolutionary science does not require rejection of the Bible. Of these respondents, 71 percent accepted some form of evolution, and 79 percent believed the Bible was a, or the, holy book. To them, these views are not mutually exclusive.

For me, there were three conclusions from this survey, of which the first two were surprising:

First, young-earth creationism was not the most common belief even in the Bible belt of Oklahoma.
Second, over half of the respondents thought the world was going to end soon.
Third, most Bible believers do not realize that the Bible does not support their beliefs.

I will continue administering this survey and eventually I hope that I will have a large sample size. In my approximately ten remaining professional years, I might get close to a thousand respondents.