[THERE WAS A SERIOUS ERROR IN THESE SENTENCES]: [[A reader] points out that the ABC News PrimeTime poll I cited a few days ago — which seems to show that 60% of people believe the literal truth of the Biblical flood story, creation story, and Exodus story — had the fieldwork conducted by ICR, or the Institution for Creation Research. It might be that this skewed upwards the results of the poll, though it’s impossible to know for sure.] CORRECTION, with many thanks to reader Corey Mason: ABC News says that field work was done by ICR-International Communications Research of Media, Pa., and I have no reason to doubt this group’s objectivity. My apologies for not checking the other reader’s original report.
Other polls show that 40-45% of respondents believe in the literal truth of the Bible (see, for instance, the Virginia Commonwealth University poll, right below the ABC News poll), rather than the 60% reported in the ABC News poll, but they ask somewhat different questions. So, as usual with polls, take it all with a grain of salt.
Several people pointed out that the options in the ABC News / ICR poll didn’t cover all the possible views. The question was “I’m going to ask about a few stories in the Bible. [Story described here.] Do you think that’s literally true, meaning it happened that way word-for-word; or do you think it’s meant as a lesson, but not to be taken literally?”, and this leaves the possibility that it didn’t happen word-for-word, but it was meant to be taken literally (presumably because it was written by men, since God wouldn’t mean people to take literally something that wasn’t literally true).
But I doubt that this would much drive up the “happened that way word-for-word” responses: If you as a respondent think the Bible story was written by men, and was meant to be taken literally but isn’t literally true, you might say something that registers as “No Opinion,” or you might say “meant as a lesson” because that’s the closest answer to what you think. I don’t think, though, that you’d say “happened that way word-for-word” unless you really did think that it happened that way word-for-word. Still, I can’t be completely confident of that.
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