Reply #1: The test doesn't seem valid to me. [View All]

[Jim__]

I'm not a psychologist and a better understanding of psychological methods might make this whole process easier for me to understand.

My major objection is the passage that they chose from Dawkins:

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows how simplicity could change into complexity, how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people. Darwin provides a solution, the only feasible one so far suggested, to the deep problem of our existence. . . Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun. Many evolutionary transitions are elegantly documented by more or less continuous series of gradually changing intermediate fossils. Darwinian evolution shatters the illusion of design within the domain of biology, and teaches us to be suspicious of any kind of design hypothesis in physics and cosmology as well. The full implications of Darwin's revolution have yet to be widely realized. Darwinism encompasses all of life—human, animal, plant, and bacterial. Darwinian evolution, as one reviewer has observed, is the most important natural truth that science has yet discovered. No serious biologist doubts the fact that evolution has happened.

The bolded part of his statement is not part of the theory of evolution and people can consider it to be simply wrong. Evolution does not show how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people. The theory of evolution begins with living cells - i.e. highly ordered configurations of atoms. Further, while evolution does go a long way in answering questions about how complex life came about, it does not, in my opinion, provide a solution ... to the deep problem of our existence. The deep problem of our existence includes the very problem of existence which evolution makes no attempt to address.

Given these statements in Dawkins passage, how people judge that passage on truthfulness and agreement with his views becomes a somewhat open question.

Then, the question they asked about evolution and IDT:

Each passage was followed by a 6-item scale assessing participants' views about the author's expertise and their belief in the theory referred to in the passage (based on <32>). Specifically, participants rated each author, using a 9-point scale, on intelligence, knowledge, agreement with his views, and truth of his opinion. They then rated their agreement with two statements, on a 5-point scale: “Evolutionary <Intelligent design> theory is a solid theory supported by a great deal of evidence” and “Evolutionary <Intelligent design> theory is the best explanation we have of life's origins.” (It is noteworthy that although evolutionary theory addresses questions about the origin of life for each species, not the origin of life from non-life, it is very commonly presented in this way, and, in fact, the term “origin” can connote either ancestry or inception of life. However, in case this wording might have affected results, we re-analyzed the main effects and interactions in all studies excluding this item, and found that all effects held when scales were based on the remaining 5 items; one minor exception was in Study 5, where the interaction was significant only at the one-tailed level, p = .05, and the main effect of MS on Behe-IDT was no longer significant, p = .12. Interested readers should contact the authors for more information on these subsidiary analyses.)

Again, the bolded statement is a misstatement, although they claim this had no effect.

To me, their test misrepresented what evolution states. Given that these statements are juxtaposed to a passage on IDT (a typical, and typically wrong, passage from an IDT adherent) I can't accept that they've actually tested what they wanted to test with respect to beliefs about evolution and IDT.