Right and that’s a factor in a lot of these other polls too. Especially the age break downs. There are a number of other, longer running, larger polls on religious and political tops in the US than the . Larger sample sizes, active testing of different wording, and break downs by demographics. I think Pew is one of the big ones. When you take the larger sample sizes and break them down by age you see some pretty startling differences. Those under about 45, and especially those under 35 have shockingly lower levels of religiosity and much less acceptance of things like creationism, angels, etc. There’s still plenty of supernatural thought in other subjects, but there’s a really extreme correlation between age and geography and acceptance of baldly Evangelical Christian fringe concepts. Hell even when you break these things down by sect you see major changes, Remember The Catholic Church explicitly rejects Young Earth Creationism, accepts evolution etc (and most American Catholics are significantly more liberal than the Church itself).
Basically my take away for years has been these thing suffer from the same sort of response bias that most polling does, but frequently in more extreme fashion. Old people, people in rural and southern areas, whites, and those who are most enthusiastic about religion are far, far, far more likely to respond to the poll. So any poll that isn’t maximizing its sample size, and making their estimates about national belief levels based on careful analysis of demographics is basically over emphasizing what old white evangelicals believe. Which tracks rather nicely with the various estimates of what percentages identify as what denomination.
While something like 70%-80% of Americans still identify as “Christian”, Christianity isn’t a monolith, and many of the denominations hold beliefs that are mutually exclusive. (In particular Evangelicals often describe both Mormons and Catholics as non-Christian). So depending on which numbers you believe the largest single block is either the Nones (a catchall for Atheists, Agnostics, people who don’t give a shit and those people who are “spiritual but not religious”) or the Catholics at around 25ish percent. Between the two you’ve got nearly half the country. Most of you’re nones are unlikely to accept shit like YEC, though angels and denial of evolution aren’t out the window. Catholics believe plenty that’s fringe religious, including angels. And there’s a small but vocal hardcore coalition that’s accepting of things like creationism. But biblical liberalism (including a young earth) is not accepted by the Church itself, and is in large part antithetical to Catholic Theological thought. And most American Catholics are significantly more liberal, especially on social issues than the Church itself (which is part of why they’re seeing drastic drops in attendance). Following these two categories you usually have your mainline protestant faiths. Lutherans, Episcopalians/Anglicans, Presbyterians (though there’s an internal divide there, with a small evangelical wing that’s perpetually threatening to leave), etc. These are your traditional block of “liberal” Christian faiths, they often explicitly reject creationism, the young earth, biblical liberalism, and have the exact opposite positions of social issues and politics than the Christian Right. And are often where your traditionally Black denominations sit. Last I checked they come in somewhere less than 20%. Below that are where you find your various Evangelical faiths and Mormonism, these groups are about as ideologically and theologically aligned as the Mainline Protestants, but they’re a smaller group group by far. And its where most of your creationists and biblical literalists live. After than you’ve got your assorted non-christian religions. Jews being the largest.
The more granular you look at this stuff, and the less you block Christians together as a unified whole (again they aren’t, and neither are any of the other broad categories including Nones) the less plausible a lot of these headline numbers look. It looks as is most Americans come from ideologies where these concepts are fringe, minority ideas, or completely antithetical to the ideology, theology, or politics of the groups Americans actually sit in. So I tend to assume they’re over estimated to various degrees. Something I think is well backed by the number of recent studies and polls that have found Religiosity in generally falling quickly as older generations (especially the boomers) start to die out and the generations born since the mid 70’s, as well as non-whites, become a larger proportion of the population. Though I would note that there doesn’t seem to be too much change in supernatural thought or science literacy in general, even across demographics. The BS is just getting less explicitly Christian.
