A comparison is made between the willingness of parochial and public school students to accept animistic explanations for phenomena. The animistic views of 424 parochial high school seniors (class of 1994) were compared and contrasted with the animistic views of 1954, 1989 and 1992 introductory college biology classes. The distinctive difference between the public and parochial students was the public school students were taught evolution as a fact while the parochial school students were taught Biblical, young Earth creation as a fact. The parochial student groups showed similar animistic tendencies as the 1954 biology class. For the 1989 and 1992 public school group of students the animistic responses were double and even triple the responses given by the parochial and 1954 public school students. A statistically significant relation exists between the percent of students with a public school background at a parochial school and the willingness of the students at that parochial school to accept animistic explanations for phenomena. Taken as a whole, the data presented here seem to indicate that the teaching of evolution will result in students being more willing to accept animistic explanations for phenomena.