So observes John Gardner from Oxford, who sent me a link to this item:

Chris Parker, a final-year English student at Hertford College, Oxford,
believes God made the world. Ask him why, and he talks cogently about
the gaps in evolutionary theory and how explanations involving
intelligent design are unsatisfactory. But, ultimately, it is because:
"As a Christian, I have believed in it for a long time and I have no
reason to doubt it."

Kim Nicholas, who is studying to be a primary
school teacher at the University of Hertfordshire, agrees. "I have
grown up in a family that goes to church and I have become a
Christian," she says. "When I look at things in the world I think it is
amazing that God has created it for us. If you have faith in God you
can believe he has done it, whether there is evidence or not."

Annie
Nawaz, a second-year law student at Hertfordshire, distinguishes
between scientific and "natural" evidence written in stone in the holy
books. "As a practising Muslim, the holy Qur’an – that’s our proper
evidence," she says. It does bother her when this conflicts with other
kinds of evidence, but "it just comes down to the way you have been
brought up and your beliefs and values and how strong they are".

Such
views are less unusual among UK students than you might think. In a
survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism – the
idea God created us within the past 10,000 years – to any other
explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of
intelligent design – that some features of living things are due to a
supernatural being such as God. This means more than 30% believe our
origins have more to do with God than with Darwin – evolution theory
rang true for only 56%.

Opinionpanel Research’s survey of more
than 1,000 students found a third of those who said they were Muslims
and more than a quarter of those who said they were Christians
supported creationism. Nearly a third of Christians and 10% of those
with no particular religion favoured intelligent design. Women were
more likely to choose spiritual explanations: less than half chose
evolution, with 14% preferring creationism and 22% intelligent design.

While
three years of learning how to weigh evidence appears to make students
slightly more inclined towards evolution, with 57% of third-years
choosing it compared with 54% of first-years, it does not appear to put
them off belief in God. As many third-years as first-years believed in
creationism, although slightly fewer supported intelligent design.

The
findings come as little surprise to Roger Downie, professor of
zoological education at Glasgow University. Two years ago he surveyed
the views on evolution of biology and medical students there. "What was
extremely worrying for students embarking on evidence- and
science-based disciplines was that they were perfectly prepared to say
they had rejected it not on the basis of evidence but on the basis of
their religious beliefs," he says.

Sad to say, we’ve seen evidence of this unfortunate trend before.