Egyptian Spit, “Intelligent Design,” and Other Tales of the Origin of the World
The belief system called “intelligent design” (ID) that is being debated for inclusion in
the Dover school curriculum is certainly not scientific, and there is no benefit in
redefining science just to fit in this one, narrowly focused, newly-minted origin story. But
it is disconcerting to hear opponents of religious origin stories like intelligent design state
that there is no place in a school curriculum for a discussion of beliefs about the
beginning of our worlds.
There is some benefit, as anthropologists around the world have often noted, in
examining and comparing different systems of religious principles in order to understand
why people believe certain things and how they act on those beliefs. The place, then, for
the discussion of religious origin stories and their related cultural agendas is certainly in a
classroom, a classroom of anthropology.
But a warning: an anthropological approach would place ID and creationism into some
pretty fascinating and quite provocative company, and ID supporters will find that their
simple tales may not hold up to such cross-cultural competition. For example, the
Australian Aborigine creation time is roughly translated as, “The Dreaming,” and
conveys the work of spirits who designated features of the landscape that are still lived in
by today’s original people of Australia. In the Southwest United States, there is a
breathtaking description of emergence from an underground lake by the first Pueblo
people and their subsequent spread across the harsh but magnificent landscape.
The ancient Maya left an account called the Popol Vuh which tells the story of gods who
simply thought the world into being and then, wanting to be admired, populated it with
flawed humans made out of maize. Native Hawaiians can describe the creation of the
natural world from a gourd that was split in half and the creation of people from red
earth. Over time the ancient Egyptians had several ideas about creation, some involving
mucus, spit, and other bodily fluids, one involving a goose that lays an egg, and all
designed to be integrated with the contemporaneous political situation. Creation gods
have been male or female or sometimes both at once; they have been sneaky
shapeshifters, bizarre jokesters, good teachers, bold thieves, dangerous animals, and
aspects of the sky, the water or the land. They have been both kind and really, really
nasty.
What would quickly become evident in a cross-cultural comparison of intelligent design
with other origin stories is that they all have similar mythological elements and
characters: the divine beings who dramatically create the natural world, tricksters who try
to deny or thwart that creation, humans who leave on journeys that separate them from
the divine or from nature, and human beings who have forgotten how to trust each other.
They also have similar functions: to make sense of today’s problems and issues by using
origin stories that are supposed to explain why things are they way they are.
All the world’s belief systems are rich in myths and rituals and symbols that prove the
creativity of the human mind and the vibrancy of human social life. It would be a shame
if intelligent design supporters and opponents alike, by trying to limit religious ideas
about creation to one spare tale, kept us all from seeing this bigger picture of the world’s
religious beliefs painted on a huge and diverse canvas. Science is another canvas
altogether, and it would be a disservice to both religion and science if they had to live by
each other’s rules.
