According to a poll conducted by the University of Texas and The Texas Tribune, 30 percent of people in the state believe that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, and more than half—51 percent—don’t believe that “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”
Asked without the word “animals,” 50 percent believe humans evolved over millions of years from “less advanced forms of life” (12 percent saying it happened with no involvement from God, while 38 percent believe God guided the process), with another 38 percent believing “God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago.” And when any reference to “humans” was taken out of the equation, 15 percent said they believed “life on earth” evolved through natural selection with no guidance from God, while 53 percent said they believed it evolved “with a guiding hand from God,” and 22 percent said they believe life existed in its present form since the beginning of time.

Mississippi led the nation in church attendance last year, just like in 2008, according to a recent Gallup poll. Of the 10 states with the highest church attendance, all of them, except Utah, are located in the South.


The states with the lowest church attendance are either in New England or the West, and the researchers have some idea why:

The Southern states have high proportions of residents who identify as Protestant, non-Catholic Christians—faith traditions with high average church attendance levels. Residents of New England, the Northwest, and other Western states are more likely to have no religious identity, usually associated with low church attendance. And the majority of Utah residents are Mormons, a group with the highest average church attendance level of any major religious group in the country.
Ethnic and racial differences may account for some of the state-by-state differences in churchgoing. Black Americans have the highest church-attendance averages of any major racial or ethnic group, and Southern states have a relatively high proportion of blacks in their populations.

But another possibility brings to mind the kind of geographic “big sort” that journalist Bill Bishop describes us undergoing; it appears we’re moving ourselves into communities where we cluster with like-minded people, creating more homogeneous states, as the researchers suggest:

Individuals who are attracted to Vermont and Alaska, by way of example, may be the types of people who are less inclined to participate in religious services than are those attracted to Southern or Midwestern states.

Young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are less religious than their parents and grandparents, according to a new report from The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The study found that young Americans are less likely than than their elders to belong to a particular faith or to regularly attend religious services. They are also more likely to believe in evolution and less likely to feel Hollywood threatens our moral values (though they are about as likely to reject the idea that there are absolute standards of right and wrong). And young evangelicals specifically are significantly less likely than older evangelicals to believe that the Bible is the “literal” word of God.
But the study also found that young people are, in some ways, as spiritual as their elders were when they were in their 20s. Almost the same percentage say religion is important in their lives, they’re certain God exists, and they believe in life after death, heaven, hell, and miracles. Young adults are about as likely to pray daily as their elders did when they were the same age. As the researchers explain in their report:

This suggests that some of the religious differences between younger and older Americans today are not entirely generational but result in part from people’s tendency to place greater emphasis on religion as they age.

Still, young Americans are more likely to be unaffiliated with a particular religious faith (25 percent) than their parents were (13 percent) at their age, and we’ll have to wait to see how they feel about religious practices and beliefs as they get older.

Hawaii led the nation in well-being last year, followed by Utah, the 2008 top scorer, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.
Here’s the rest of the best:

And here’s the complete list of state well-being scores:
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