Messing with Texas

There are certain things we like to do on this blog: mock the dead almost as soon as they die, make cheap dick jokes, whine, bitch about religion, and deride Texas. It is because all of these things are easy and several of them involve bitter meanspiritedness. Especially mocking Texas.

What have they done this time? Oh nothing on the level of their previous exploits of taking climate change denial to the courts or using their education board to push right wing conservative dogma and rewrite history. No, it's what they believe. 60%, more or less, of them believe that it was possible that the Flintstones was a documentary, among other things. ....Yeah.

A new University of Texas/Texas Tribune survey shows just how destructive a politicized right-wing curriculum can be. A large number of Texans polled said they still don’t believe in evolution and are convinced that humans and dinosaurs co-existed:

– 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.

That be hilarious if they weren't in he process of basically rewriting the nation's textbooks. God love 'em. No, seriously, God loves them. That is science fact.

Now I'm all for mixing cement in a pelican and the green car movement of Bedrock, but I'm fairly sure Fred and Barney riding on dinosaurs was a creative flourish. But it shows that with a little creative ripping off of the Honeymooners, slapping the words 'rock' or 'granite' into every name, bright colors, and a snappy theme tune can make a cartoon more credible to Texans than the Origin of the Species, carbon dating, and other such methods of witchcraft scientific measurement.

So not only didn't we descend from no monkey, the earth is so young that there was a period of time where prehistoric (but not all that prehistoric) man strapped a saddle to a triceratops before he rode it to his job at the quarry before all the dinosaurs were killed off because God didn't tell Noah to take a multitude of thunder-lizards on his ark. Because the tyrannosaurus rejected the word of God or something.

That all seems plausible, I can see why Texans believe it in frightening numbers. It certainly makes more sense than listening to the collected ramblings thousands of scientists who have observed and studied the fossil record over hundreds of years. Those people aren't God and their books don't involve giants, men with powerful hair, and spontaneous booze transmogrification. You know, like real science books (of God) have. I think Texas has it all figured out. Thank God we have them to show us the way.