I'm not a fan of meatloaf, but meatcake is certainly prettier.

I get what you're saying Cindy, but just because the poll answers don't quite apply to you specifically, that doesn't nullify the poll data.

I thought she was saying that the poll questions aren't useful--not that they're not useful to her, but that they mean too different things to everyone.

I thought she was saying that the poll questions aren't useful--not that they're not useful to her, but that they mean too different things to everyone.

What I'm saying is that charge can be levelled at any poll. All poll questions are like that, for pretty much any poll on any subject. And yet? Polls still produce useful data, when interpreted correctly.

What I'm saying is that charge can be levelled at any poll.

Sure. Any charge can be levelled at anything. However wrt to that claim and polls, the charge can be levelled with varying applicability. How ambiguous are the terms? How granular the definitions? Cindy considers the threshold for those questions, it seems, to be exceeded, and therefore she doesn't regard the results with confidence.

I have actually had someone say to me, "Well, I know I wasn't descended from some ape!"

That's odd. Both of my parents are apes. My grandparents were too. I wonder what his parentage was.

Hey Matt, any improvement with your dad?

Some in terms of mood, offset by greater physical weakness/shakiness and the frustration that goes with it as of last night and this morning. Still, we're now on more familiar ground. And as I said to Mom, I'll take frustrating problems over scary ones any day.

I can never decide if I'm more offended by Creationism and ID because it renders my entire profession and related fields useless, or if it amuses me more because of that...

Cindy considers the threshold for those questions, it seems, to be exceeded, and therefore she doesn't regard the results with confidence.

So then, how do we tell if the poll is giving bad data, because of bad questions, or if it's just one person taking issue with the results, but the poll and the data is still good?

I guess I'm just responding to the fact that Cindy's arguments about the subtle differences between various interpretations and personal definitions of Biblical literalism aren't very convincing to me. I quite understand that this is something where specific definitions of "literal" are going to be different from person to person, but there's enough similarity in the concepts that it is actually meaningful to me to know how many people believe in Biblical literalism or inerrancy -- if for no other reason than because these are terms I always hear from believers, not areligious outsiders trying to give unwanted label to something.

I have never encountered working definitions of "literal" or "inerrant" that were not sufficiently removed from my own working definitions of "open to interpretation" and "metaphorical" that gradations in the levels of literalism/inerrancy were of any great significance.

Hey, Sean? I drove through Sarnia on this trip. Tell me I'm not the only one who remembers the Sarnia hand gesture.