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.

The Rev. Stanley L. Jaki was a Benedictine priest with doctorates in physics and theology and was the author of over fifty books, including Cosmos and Creator (Regnery Publishing, 1990). He was Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J.

An American Scientist survey found that only ten percent of eminent evolutionary scientists see an inevitable conflict between religion and evolution.

Check out PollingReport.com polls about Americans’ beliefs about evolution, creationism and Intelligent Design.

A survey released in August 2005 by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported Americans’ beliefs about the origins of life.

An MIT survey published in Feb. 2013 interviewed and observed the gap between religion and science, in particular the struggle between faith and science on the topic of the creation of the universe, evolution and intelligent design.