Despite more than a century of scientific support, the theory of evolution has not been fully assimilated and embraced in contemporary society. Creationist beliefs continue to be endorsed by many adults (Numbers, 1992) and adherents of creation science now enjoy considerable success at the school district level in the United States, advocating that “intelligent design” theory and evolutionary theory be given equal time (Scott, 1994).

Why are creationist beliefs so persistent? In this chapter I shall argue that this persistence is not simply the result of fundamentalist politics and socialization. Rather, these social forces themselves depend on certain propensities of the human mind. On this account, the persistence of creationist beliefs in a population attests to their cognitive affinity as well as their public availability (cf. Evans, 1994/1995; Shore, 1996; Sperber, 1996).

This chapter offers a broad look at the nature and genesis of beliefs about the origins of species. Recent evidence on the development of children's thinking on this subject is presented in the larger context of an examination of the nature and distribution of creationist and evolutionary beliefs in contemporary society. The chapter begins with a look at the current ideological debate between proponents of evolution versus creation “science.” The case is made that their differences are better understood in terms of dissimilarity in ontological commitment rather than in the capacity to reason scientifically. The next section reviews what is known about the distribution of beliefs about origins among ordinary adults in the population at large.