It seems that we are going to look at redefining how we teach certain scientific facts to school children. Part of the argument presented in the story says,
“In one sense, intelligent design is really only a minor issue in this debate, which has been loudly going on for a long time,” says University of Wisconsin historian Ron Numbers. “Throughout the 20th century, you have seen a great deal of resistance from Americans towards evolution.”
Perhaps the real resistance is because we all “want” to believe in a thing greater than us and we cannot reconcile the two views these days. Science, technology, genetics, all offer us this series of proofs but we cannot see that the mystery side of our species needs the belief in things whether we call them “intelligent design” or the basic belief of a greater being that moves in a certain way. But really, anthropologists and others do not doubt the force of religion and belief systems in societies. I think its more difficult though to accept some cold, scientific fact over a comforting and soothing belief that in the end we owe some part of our wondrous existance to a kindly figure that oversees our daily lives. My view is that both can live on as long we understand each and know where one ends and the other begins.
Most of the anthropologists and archeologists I have known and worked with have studiously refused to get in arguments about religion. Its like the old advice about the things to not argue about, “politics and religion”. What I found in almost 20 years of anthropological research and archeological discovery was to focus on human adaptation, belief systems, technologies that explained a set of questions or hypotheses I wished to ask. I could invest in the studies of the scientific approach which allowed me to hone down on the real questions. But at the more mystical level, anthropologists definitely get that societies have always needed social, cultural, religious institutions that help explain things at a different level.
From this I infer that both can be useful and provide necessary information that enriches and defines human existance. We just need to know where one stops and the other starts. Read the link above though and then compare it with the famous Scopes trial that it references.
