This one's bound to heat up the comments sections - which is why I chose it.

It's New Year's Eve, there's virtually no news worth writing about, so why not get everyone's dander up and post on the latest Pew Poll about American attitudes toward human evolution.

About half of those who express a belief in human evolution take the view that evolution is "due to natural processes such as natural selection" (32% of the American public overall). But many Americans believe that God or a supreme being played a role in the process of evolution. Indeed, roughly a quarter of adults (24%) say that "a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today."

These beliefs differ strongly by religious group. White evangelical Protestants are particularly likely to believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Roughly two-thirds (64%) express this view, as do half of black Protestants (50%). By comparison, only 15% of white mainline Protestants share this opinion.

There also are sizable differences by party affiliation in beliefs about evolution, and the gap between Republicans and Democrats has grown. In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.

These are some of the key findings from a nationwide Pew Research Center survey conducted March 21-April 8, 2013, with a representative sample of 1,983 adults, ages 18 and older. The survey was conducted on landlines and cellphones in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.0 percentage points.

That's a remarkable increase of Republican skeptics. But breaking down answers demographically, there are few surprises:

Beliefs about human and animal evolution tend to vary by gender, age and education. Men are somewhat more inclined than women to say that humans and animals have evolved over time. Younger adults are more likely than older generations to believe that living things have evolved over time. And those with more years of formal schooling are more likely than those with less education to say that humans and animals have evolved over time.

There are fewer self-identified Republicans today than there were in 2009. And today's Republicans are older, more male, and less educated. That probably accounts for some of the increase.

So have at it in the comments. Please be respectful and don't condemn the apostates to hell unless you feel it absolutely necessary.