religion now out-trumping genetics?

[acroyear]

Based on Opinions About Astronomy, White People Are Stupid... : Mike the Mad Biologist:

People were asked:

Most astronomers believe the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago in a massive event called the Big Bang. Do you think that's about right or do think the universe was created much more recently?

As you might guess, Republicans outdid themselves in their stupidity (and in other news, dog bites man...).

The numbers, grouped by race, showed 58% of white people answering "Right", vs 75% and 73% for blacks and hispanics respectively.

But it's odd how, whenever there's a behavioral observation that reflects poorly on minorities or women, 'genetic conservatives' assume a genetic basis, whereas when white people behave like fucking morons, genetics isn't even broached.

Comments

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

"Genetic conservatives" is a weird phrase to describe those people, mind. To me it sounds like people likely to predict a slower rate of genetic change in a particular organism over a particular period of time.

And anyway, the people arguing for a genetically-based white male superiority are generally also the same people who argue for taking the word of ancient tribespeople telling origin stories over modern scientists using modern technology and the scientific method.

(Not arguing that ancient tribespeople were unintelligent, btw, just that the tools they had was less helpful when it comes to understanding the facts about the universe's age than ours are. Very likely my own understanding of the universe will look quite as primitive, or more so, to my descendants a thousand or so years from now. Assuming the species survives that long, and doesn't have some major collapse that involves the loss of scientific knowledge and/or technology.)