[extropy-chat] Intelligent Design: I'm not dead yet

[Russell Wallace]

On 2/7/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 26, 2006, at 8:18 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:
>
> > Slashdot is reporting [1] that the BBC is reporting [2] that more
> > than 50% of the people in Britian do not believe in evolution and
> > more than 40% support the teaching of creationism or intelligent
> > design.  So this isn't a problem for the United States only.
> >


Survey figures like that rarely have any connection to reality, and this one
definitely doesn't. (Apart from misrepresentative samples and just plain
fabrication, it's been shown that small differences in the wording of
questions with the same denotation, particularly on politically loaded
topics, make large differences in the distribution of answers.)

Hmm.  So perhaps we should take it as a given that the 50% of the
> population below average intelligence in IQ or by choice just simply
> isn't worth attempting to convince of much of anything.


Unfortunately, even people with high intelligence often just use it for
self-deception.

- Russell
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