[longshadow]

Great post, and your reposting of my essay is appreciated.

On to more important matters; in regard to your interlocutor's assertion regarding 1 in 10,000 FReepers supporting evolution, I should like to call everyones attention to the ONLY poll of which I am aware that was ever conducted on the subject here on FR. I reproduced the results exactly as it was posted originally; it is extremely informative, in more ways than one:

---

To: Godel, physicist

I want to take a few minutes to thank all of you for your input. This poll was more popular than I had thought and I appreciate even your criticism of the questions (can't please everyone).

I'm taking down the poll now because although I didn't get exactly the information I had been expecting, as often happens in the field of discovery, I learned some very interesting things nonetheless.

The final results of the poll are as follows:

Which do you believe?

Evolution.

13.0%

(225)

Creation.

86.7%

(1501)

I don't know/care.

0.3%

(6)

Total votes: 1732

Below are a list of those posters who attempted to violate the integrity of the poll. The last byte has been changed to protect the guilty (but if you mail me I will talk):

165.76.125.*** - Voted for Creation 990 times.
63.175.96.*** - Voted for Creation 399 times.

This is a somewhat appalling revelation about the honesty of certain extremists of the Creationist side. I admit I had not expected this, if anything I would have expected those who place such a high value on literal interpretations of the Bible to have a well developed sense of ethics and not desire to dishonestly inflate the prominence of their beliefs. I am enlightened by this experience.

For those who are interested the adjusted results after discarding the 1387 false votes by these 2 most egregious respondants are:

225 - Evolution
114 - Creation

137 Posted on 03/01/2001 11:02:59 PST by Godel

So, in contrast to your interlocutor's assertion that only 1 in 10,000 FReepers supports evolution, we see that in fact the ratio, as of 2001, was roughly 2:1 IN FAVOR of Evolution over Creationism. It would appear your interlocutor's estimates for the support enjoyed by Evolutionary Theory in FR is no less than several light years removed from reality.

We also learned that a small number of Creationists, about 2%, were mendacious enough to try to queer the outcome of the poll in a sizeable way.

[andysandmikesmom]

Bravo to you for for your last post ...I guess there is no way to prevent people from dishonestly voting time and again, and trying to skew the poll...I am glad that someone was able to untangle such a web of deceit, and provide an accurate poll...

[Physicist]

Thank you very much for reposting that! I spent some time this evening trying to find it in response to editor-surveyor's WAG, but to no avail.

[Verginius Rufus]

I think you just uncovered evidence that some creationists are Democrats.

[Dimensio]

Hmph. Clearly a couple of evolutionists fraudulently inflated the Creationist vote count knowing that they would be caught in a deliberate effort to try and discredit the honourable, always-honest creationist camp.

[King Prout]

wow.

[PatrickHenry]

... mendacious enough to try to queer the outcome of the poll ...

I had forgotten all about that poll. Thanks for posting it. The names of those who tried to queer the poll got revealed later. I've forgotten who they were, but it doesn't matter. I think one of them is now banned. Maybe both. They opened everyone's eyes to the lying and fraud on the creationist side. A lesson that has paid off again and again.