Friday, February 19, 2010

Go Texas!

A new University of Texas/Texas Tribune survey asked Texans about their beliefs on religion and evolution. The answers are not encouraging:

51 percent disagree with the statement, “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”
38 percent agree with the statement, “God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago.”
30 percent agree with the statement, “Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.” Another 30 percent said they “don’t know” whether the statement is true.
It doesn't look good in pretty pie charts either.


Of course this is hardly just a Texas problem. At least I don't know of any cases like this Missouri high school that banned t-shirts with images of evolution on them.  Of course, given that Texas is trying to rewrite high school text books to push right-wing beliefs and that some Texas school districts are forcing long-haired 5 year old boys into isolation in order to ensure conservative heteronormativity, it's probably just that they haven't had the opportunity to ban the t-shirts.