Triangle poll about origins draws a record response

By Meredith Kreigh
Managing Editor

Triangle’s most recent online poll elicited a higher response than any other poll, getting nearly 300 more votes than its nearest competitor.

 The question “what do you believe about the origins of the universe and man?” reflected the hot debate taking place at Bryan over the past few months.

 Of the 566 people who participated in the poll, 226 (40%) said they believed in a literal six-day creation, consisting of 24-hour days. Exactly half as many, 113 (20%), voted in favor of at least intelligent design, while 109 voters said they believed in theistic evolution. Only a few votes behind, 92 (16%) voters endorsed Darwinian evolution.

 Only 26 (5%) of the participants admitted that they simply did not know.

 Junior Robin Harrison said that, in the heat of the moment, she answered in favor of theistic evolution but after reevaluation decided she was more along the lines of “don’t know.”

 “I definitely think God could have used evolution without it undermining Scripture’s authority. … However, this much I am convinced of: for the Christian, the topic of origins is far more complicated than a simple ‘the Bible says this’ or ‘the science says this’ conclusion,” Harrison said.

 “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say ‘God definitely created this way’ because we might not ever have everything figured out about origins — we were not there. And maybe that view, the view that we might not have all the answers, requires the most faith,” she added.

 That “I don’t know” line pervades many students’ responses. Sophomore Bryan Alderman said that though he wanted to participate in the poll, he decided against it. He said there just wasn’t an answer that was quite right for him, falling somewhere between six-day creation and intelligent design.

 Since Triangle started publishing polls, they have averaged at 70 voters per poll. This single poll registered over eight times more voters than that average.