Biblical illiteracy among Americans is confounding Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham.

"How can that be?" he asked in a Facebook post and blog in Answers in Genesis early this week.

Ham was commenting on a recent survey showing that as many as 40 to 50 percent of Christian Americans do not believe that the Bible should be taken literally in all that it presents.

He said this finding points to fundamental problems within the Church.

"Sadly, our once-Christian nation has drifted far from its roots. Few people are taught solid, biblical theology and, as a result, biblical illiteracy is rampant throughout our country," wrote the president of the Answers in Genesis, Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.

The survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research, which was released on Sept. 28, summarised its findings by saying that there is confusion among American Christians about who God really is, The Christian Post reported.

Ham noted that "while 65 percent of Americans agree that 'God is a perfect being and cannot make a mistake' and 58 percent agree that 'God is the Author of Scripture,' only 47 percent agree that 'the Bible is 100 percent accurate in all that it teaches.'"

He said "many just don't understand what it means that God is the infinite Creator God — infinite in wisdom and knowledge and that 'God is not a man, that He should lie' (Numbers 23:19)."

Ham cited another example showing Christian Americans' biblical illiteracy. Sixty-nine percent of churches agree that "there is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit," but 53 percent agree that "Jesus is the first and greatest creature created by God" and 56 percent agree that "the Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being."

The results prompted Ham to ask: "So people can believe that Jesus is God yet was created, and that the Holy Spirit is God yet is not a personal being?"

In another indication of the respondents' contradictory beliefs, 43 percent of them who agree God is the author of Scripture also agree that modern science discredits some of the claims of the Bible.

Other surveys have also shown that many Christian colleges are compromising on biblical principles about the authority of the Bible, Ham noted. "These colleges allegorize or explain away the historicity of Genesis, attacking the very foundation of the faith—the gospel! The pastors and church leaders coming out of these Bible colleges and seminaries are then teaching what they have learned—that the history of the Bible is not to be trusted and that man's ideas can "reinterpret" God's Word," he said.

Ham urged families and churches to steer American culture "back to the foundation of the Word of God."