Read a May 17, 2011, article published by CBS Minnesota about then-GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s views on evolution. Gingrich said in May 2011 that he sees no conflict between faith and science with regard to life’s origins.

A September 2011 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, in partnership with Religion News Service, showed that a majority of Americans (57 percent) believe in evolution. But white evangelicals and Tea Party members — a core constituency for the GOP — are significantly less likely to believe in evolution.

A January 2012 survey of Protestant pastors, conducted by LifeWay Research, shows that by a wide margin most of them believe that God did not use evolution to create humans and think Adam and Eve were literal people. It also found that ministers are almost evenly split on whether the Earth is thousands of years old.

Read a Jan. 23, 2012, post at the Religion Clause blog that counts six separate bills pending in state legislatures that promote teaching creationism or intelligent design in schools.

Read a Jan. 31, 2012, Religion News Service story about the efforts of state governments to remove evolution from school curriculum.

Lawrence M. Krauss is a cosmologist and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which explores questions ranging from the origin of the universe to the origins of human culture and cognition. His commentaries on matters of science and religion have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, including a Sept. 8, 2010, column, “Our Spontaneous Universe,” and one […]

Massimo Pigliucci, an atheist, is a philosophy professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He blogs about science, philosophy, politics and religion at Rationally Speaking and co-hosts the Rationally Speaking podcast.

Richard Dawkins is former Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and one of the best-known of the New Atheists. His many books include The God Delusion and 2009’s The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

The Elder Cohousing Network in Davis, Calif., an eight-household community, opened in January 2006 as the first elder cohousing development in the country. Members range in age from 76 to 92; the community grew out of a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Davis.